NSHNCTand intelligence 



IN THE 



#MMM KINGDOM 



REV. E.WASMANN S.J. 




Class _iL3ML 

Book.-,yy.3 

Copyright N° 



COFfRIGHT DEPOSm 



Instinct and Intelligence 



IN THE 



Animal Kingdom. 



A Critical Contribution to Modern Animal Psychology, 

BY 

ERIC WASMANN, S. J. 



Authorized Translation of the Second and Enlarged Edition. 



St. Louis, Mo., 1903. 

Published by B. HERDER, 

J7 South Broadway. 



THE LIBRARY OF 
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Two Copies Received 

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PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION. 



THE following essay is offered as a contribution to 
comparative psychology. Its special purpose is 
to submit the manner in which modern animal psychol- 
ogy applies the notions of instinct and intelligence to 
a careful examination. In a former publication we 
endeavored to elucidate the doctrine of animal intelli- 
gence according to St. Thomas Aquinas. For this 
purpose we selected an example from insect life. 1 
Besides numerous smaller essays on the life of ants and 
their guests, which appeared mostly in German scien- 
tific periodicals, we have published a biologic-psycho- 
logical work on Mixed Ant-Societies. 2 It was prin- 
cipally in discussing the latter publication that represent- 
atives of modern animal psychology raised sundry 
objections to our distinction between instinct and intel- 
ligence. As, however, the exact meaning and use of 
these terms is the essential point of difference between 
the old and recent animal psychology, we deemed it 
appropriate to treat this question in a special paper in 
which the difficulties of our critics could be more closely 
investigated. We shall try, as far as possible, to avoid 
all abstract philosophical discussions; the more so, as 
the present essay must be adapted to the views of mod- 
ern naturalists. 



1 ) "The leaf-roller" (Rhynchites betulae). A scientific essay on 
Animal Instinct. Muenster, 1884. 

2 ) "The Compound Nests and Mixed Colonies of Ants" (German). 
Muenster, 1891. 

lii 



Preface to the First Edition, 

Consequently we have first to explain what we, and 
what our antagonists mean by instinct and intelligence. 
This will lead to a correct use of the terms. Secondly, 
we must examine the true relation of instinct to intel- 
ligence in animal life. This investigation will show, 
whether intelligence in its genuine meaning may be 
attributed to animals, or whether man is the only intel- 
ligent being in the created world. For the same pur- 
pose we shall soon publish a further essay on the com- 
parative mental faculties of ants, of higher animals and 
of man, which will be in close connection with and rest 
upon the present work. 



PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. 



THE interest with which this essay was received, 
has made a second edition necessary. In order 
to do justice to recent objections of our scientific op- 
ponents, we had to enlarge it in various places. Still 
we confine ourselves to real and positive objections. 
Moreover, we have inserted a chapter on the different 
Forms of Learning. 

The present work is closely connected with our 
Comparative Studies on the Mental Faculties of Ants 
and Higher Animals (German, second, enlarged edi- 
tion, Freiburg i. Br., 1900). Besides, we desire to 
call attention to an essay written for Zoologists, and 
entitled "The Mental Faculties of Ants" (German). 
Zoologica, Heft 26, Stuttgart, 1899. It may w r ell serve 
as a supplement to the views we advanced in the above 
mentioned writings, as it supplies new material for 
argument, 



REMARKS OF THE TRANSLATOR. 



MANY books on animal psychology, and in par- 
ticular, on the instinct of animals, have been 
written within the last quarter of the nineteenth cen- 
tury. However, the value of these publications is very 
different. Several authors have deceived themselves 
and their readers by dropping the chain of argument at 
the critical point, by evading the difficulty, and using 
logically unwarrantable, or otherwise obscure phrases. 
Very few, indeed, are plain and consistent. E. Was- 
mann, well known in Germany as the famous ant biolo- 
gist, is one of the few. With admirable surety of aim, 
and well skilled in controversial philosophy, he presses 
his subject home, sentence by sentence, he is never 
afraid to face the point at issue, and occasionally ad- 
duces an appropriate example, mostly taken from his 
own observation. 

The object of this translation is to make English- 
speaking scientists acquainted with Wasmann's publi- 
cations, which are considered in Germany as standard 
biological literature. The technical terms we have 
adopted are pretty nearly the same as those of Lubbock, 
Romanes, etc., in their scientific writings. We took 
this precaution in order to be better understood by mod- 
ern scientists. The terms "understanding," "reason" 
and "intelligence," however, are used for one and the 
same physical entity. 

In the "American Naturalist" (1901, p. 808), Prof, 



Remarks of the Translator. 

\V. M. Wheeler, of Texas University, suggests, that a 
translation of Wasmann's psychological essays might 
prove useful for American readers. Prof. Wheeler's 
psychological views are, in general, very similar to 
those of Wasmann; but as he does not accept Was- 
mann's definition of instinct and intelligence, some crit- 
ical remarks on his objections have been added by the 
author to the fourth chapter of this English translation 
of his book. Moreover, the reader will find some addi- 
tional notes on the psychological views of Loeb and 
Garner. 

We shall consider it an ample reward for our 
trouble, if even a few thorough scientists become ac- 
quainted through this translation with Wasmann's val- 
uable publications. 

Canisius College, Buffalo, N. Y., Dec. 3, 1902. 



CONTENTS. 



PAGE. 

Preface to the first edition iii 

'Preface to the second edition v 

Remarks of the translator vi 

Contents * x 

CHAPTER I. 
Popular or Scientific Animal Psychology i 

The mania of modern "Animal Intelligence." Wundt's opin- 
ion of "Pseu do-Psychology." Fundamental principles of a 
scientific animal psychology. 

CHAPTER II. 
Instinct and Intelligence according to Modern Zoology... 12 

Its definitions of Instinct and Intelligence examined and 
illustrated by examples. Darwin's views on animal intelligence. 
Modern zoology mistakes complex sensitive representations for 
intelligence. Examples prove that this notion of intelligence 
is untenable. 

CHAPTER III. 
What is Intelligence and what is Instinct? 23 

Intelligence and reason. Intelligence is the power of formal 
conclusion. Instinct is a sensitive impulse to actions that are 
unconsciously adaptive. Essential and unessential criteria of 
instinct. The power of sensitive perception and its faculties. 
Instinct is the adaptive disposition of the powers of sensitive 
perception and appetite, and constitutes as such the principle 
of the spontaneous actions of the animal. Senses and spirit. 

CHAPTER IV. 
Examination of some obj ections 45 

Popular psychology strongly opposed to a critical analysis 
of notions. Is Reimarus the originator of Modern Animarl » 
Psychology? Reimarus and the Animal Psychology of Scho- 
lastic Philosophy. Forel's Automatisms" and ''Plastic Neu- 
rozymic Activities." Other objections of Forel. A charm- 
ing criminal romance of ants by an anonymous critic. H. E. 
Ziegler and Modern Science. 



Contents. 

CHAPTER V. 
General Sense Images and the Power of Abstraction 75 

Emery's objections against an essential difference between 
instinct and intelligence. Relation of the sensitive life of 
perception to the spiritual life of man. The "material conclu- 
sions" of animals. General sense images and their difference 
from general concepts. 

CHAPTER VI. 
Intelligence and Speech 96 

Emery's opinions on the relation of intelligence to speech. 
Their examination. Human speech is not the cause of intel- 
ligence, but intelligence is the cause of speech. The pretended 
"abstractions of the first order" in animals. Human speech 
and the so-called language of animals. Conclusions. Emery's 
last reply. 

CHAPTER VII. 
A Uniform Standard for Comparative Animal Psychology 124 

Smalian's objections. The pretended "gradual difference" 
between animal and human intelligence. Can the psychic life 
of insects be compared with that of the higher animals? 
Sense organs and the nervous system of insects. The cortex 
of vertebrates and the by-brain of insects. Sensitive conscious- 
ness and spiritual self-consciousness. There is a uniform 
critical standard for Comparative Psychology. Bethe's new 
reflex-theory of ant life. 

CHAPTER VIII. 
The Different Forms of Learning 149 

In view of biological facts, six different forms of learn- 
ing have to be distinguished, three forms of self-dependent 
learning, and three forms of learning through outside in- 
fluence. All six forms of learning are found united only in 
man. In animals, both in ants and in the higher mammals, the 
third and sixth forms are missing. And as these two forms 
alone offer a real argument for intelligence, it is untenable to 
assume animal intelligence. 

Conclusion 169 



CHAPTER I. 

POPULAR OR SCIENTIFIC ANIMAL PSYCHOLOGY. 

Clearness is the only way to truth. 

IT is nowadays fashionable to admit animal intelli- 
gence, and it has become a mania to humanize the 
brute. It is considered unscientific to use the word, 
"instinct," and even more so to explain all psychic 
manifestations of the animal from its instinctive sensitive 
life. On closer investigation, however, we soon notice 
whence this fashion originates. We become convinced 
that its proper home is to be found not in the truly 
scientific, but in the so-called popular scientific circles, 
especially those societies which have been instituted for 
the protection and love of animals, and gather their 
psychological knowledge of animal life from the works 
of such men as Buechner and Brehm. Having been led 
astray by these and similar writers, many try to solve 
the enigma of animal life by shifting their own range 
of thought into the brain of the brute. Then they in- 
nocently draw out their own ideas, and believe them to 
be the n.ental activities of the animal, But genuine 
scientists, even adherents of the Darwinian theory of 
evolution, judge otherwise. With these men the point 
of discussion is a very different one. The question is 
not, whether the adaptive actions of animals have in 
general to be explained by instinct or intelligence, for 
these scientific opponents willingly acknowledge, that 
the psychic phenomena of animal life are mostly of an 
instinctive nature, whilst those which they ascribe to 
"intelligence" are understood to proceed from a faculty 

i 



2 - Chapter I. 

very different from the faculty of human beings. 
These opponents, as Romanes, Ziegler, etc., agree with 
us in deeming it unscientific and ridiculous to explain, 
as Brehm does, the adaptive activity that proceeds from 
the sensitive knowledge of animals by the "animals' 
own understanding." With true scientists, therefore, 
the gist of the argument will turn on the following two 
questions : First, is human "intelligence" essentially 
different from that of the animal, or only different in 
degree? Secondly, is it possible or not, that the human 
mind could have developed from the animal faculty of 
sensation ? 

But before commencing our comparative psychic 
investigation, it is of the utmost importance to establish 
some short and clear notions, according to which we 
shall have to decide, whether certain animal actions are 
instinctive or intelligent. True, nowadays, writers are 
not fond of exact definitions in this very line of science. 
"Why, everybody knows what is meant by instinct and 
intelligence; therefore, we need not tire our readers 
with philosophical definitions." In these, or in similar 
terms, they are wont to introduce their essays. How- 
ever, this is fishing in troubled waters. No wonder, 
then, that after the perusal of such a "scientific exam- 
ination," the reader is at a loss to see what the author 
has proven ; for the author was at a loss himself. 

Any reasoning man, much more any naturalist, who 
earnestly desires to investigate, and not to humanize 
the psychic faculties of the animal, will therefore agree 
with us in demanding a clear psychological analysis. 
Only those who assert with Alfred Brehm, that the 
notion of "instinct" is missing in their vocabulary, and 



Popular or Scientific Animal Psychology. 3 

bar out any other motive of animal psychology beyond 
"the animal's own understanding" 1 are frightened by 
a critical analysis of psychological notions, and style it 
a "reactionary endeavor," through which modern animal 
psychology is again to be "shackled by the dogmatical 
fetters of mediaeval scholasticism." Let the correct 
answer to this objection be given by William Wundt, 
professor at the University of Leipzig, a prominent 
authority among German psychologists. It is all the 
more impartial, as Wundt does not seem to be acquainted 
with any of our former publications, and cannot reason- 
ably be suspected of being influenced by the "scholastic 
reactionary party." Wundt thinks that modern animal 
psychologists deserve the reproach of too rashly making 
use of unfinished and inadequate concepts, 2 and he 
thus continues : 

"Bacon's comparison of the insufficient observation 
of nature by the Aristotelians of his day to the report of 
an ambassador, who based his knowledge of the meas- 
ures of a government upon town gossip and not upon 
accurate examination, applies fairly enough to the 
animal psychology of our time. It is permeated through 
and through by the concepts of the every-day psy- 



1 ) See "Brehm's Thierleben," 2d edition, Vol.* I; Ein Blick auf das 
Leben der Gesamtheit, p. 20 ff. In the recent (third) edition the whole 
tendential babble of Brehm on animal intelligence, unpolished in contents 
and form, has happily been omitted in the introduction to the first 
volume. Yet the psychological explanation of animal life, founded upon 
that collection of empty phrases, has, I am sorry to say, remained un- 
changed in the course of the work, even in the most recent edition. See 
also our review of the third edition in "Natur und Ofienbarung," 37 
(1891), p. 570 ff. and 40 (1894), p. 61 ff. 

2 ) "Lectures on Human and Animal Psychology" (translated from 
the Second German Edition by J. E, Creighton and E. B. Titchener, 
1896), Lect. 23, p. 341. 



4 Chapter I. 

chology, 1 which is thought to suffice for the require- 
ments of ordinary life, and too often also for the sciences 
which cannot do without psychological reference. The 
one great defect of this popular psychology is, that it 
does not take mental processes for what they show 
themselves to be to a direct and unprejudiced view, but 
imports into them the reflections of the observer about 
them. The necessary consequence for animal psy- 
chology is, that the mental actions of the animals, from 
the lowest to the highest, are interpreted as acts of the 
understanding. If any vital manifestation of the 
organism is capable of possible derivation from a series 
of reflections and inferences, that is taken as sufficient 
proof, that these reflections and inferences actually led 
up to it. And, indeed, in the absence of a careful anyalsis 
of our subjective perceptions we can hardly avoid this 
conclusion. Logical reflection is the logical process most 
familiar to us, because we discover its presence when 
we think about any object whatsoever. So that for 
popular psychology mental life in general is dissolved 
in the medium of logical reflection. The question 
whether there are not perhaps other mental processes 
of a simpler nature is not asked at all, for the one reason 
that whenever self-observation is required, it discovers 
this reflective process in the human consciousness. The 
same idea is applied to feelings, impulses and voluntary 
actions which are regarded, if not as acts of intelligence, 
still as affective states which belong to the intellectual 
sphere. 

"This mistake, then, springs from ignorance of ex- 



l ) "Jener vulgaeren Psychologie" (German text.) 



Popular or Scientific Animal Psychology. 5 

act psychological methods. It is, unfortunately, often 
rendered worse by the inclination of animal psychologists 
to see the intellectual achievements of animals in the 
most brilliant light. . . . Unbridled by scientific 
criticism, the imagination of the observer ascribes the 
phenomena in perfectly good faith to motives which are 
entirely of its own invention. The facts reported may 
be wholly true; the interpretation of the psychologist, 
innocently woven in with his account of them, puts them 
from first to last in a totally wrong light. You will 
find a proof of this on nearly every page of the works 
on animal psychology." 

The dangers hinted at by Wundt to which pseudo- 
psychology may give rise in a scientific examination of 
the psychic faculties of animals are not at all new. More 
than a hundred years ago the elder Reimarus emphati- 
cally objected in his "General Considerations on the 
Instincts of Animals" to the undiscriminating human- 
ization of animals, of which certain modern psychologists 
are so very fond. 1 Many representatives of Christian 
views of nature have recently, and without regard to 
Reimarus, energetically protested against this extremely 
unscientific method of pseudo-psychology. 2 Although 
Wundt's suggestions merely express an old truth, they 
are not, on that account, less instructive and less worthy 
of consideration; the more so, as Wundt knows their 

*) "Allgemeine Betrachtungen ueber die Triebe der Thiere," 3d 
edition, Hamburg, 1773. See especially §23. 

2 ) "Seelenleben der Thiere" (3d edition, 1897), by Otto Fluegel, an 
adherent of Herbart's Philosophy. "Der Thierische Wille," by G.' H. 
Schneider, a Darwinian zoologist who dedicated his work to Prof. Dr. E. 
Haeckel, as if he wished to prove, that "mediaeval" philosophers and 
theologians were not the only ones inclined to oppose the views of mod- 
ern animal psychology. 



6 Chapter I. 

importance from personal experience. On comparing 
the first edition of his "Lectures on Human and Animal 
Psychology," with the second edition, which we have 
just quoted, it will not escape notice, that Wundt was 
formerly influenced in his views on animal psychology 
by the very "pseudo-psychology" which he now so 
justly condemns. Nevertheless, it can only redound 
to his honor, that he had the courage to free himself 
from the sway of that unscientific method; and we be- 
lieve that other naturalists, who reason scientifically, 
might follow his example, without the least injury to 
their good name. 

Let us, then, begin our investigation with a critical 
analysis of concepts. 

The key to a scientific inquiry into the nature of the 
animal soul is evidently the soul of man. For we have 
no immediate insight into the psychic acts of the animal ; 
/we can only infer their existence and nature from the 
exterior actions which our senses perceive. We must 
compare these manifestations of the activity of the 
animal soul with the manifestations of our own psychic 
life, the interior causes of which are known to us from 
our inner consciousness. Consequently scientific psy- 
chology applies the same key as pseudo-psychology, but 
it follows critical methods. It does not forget, as the 
other does, the fundamental law of a rational explana- 
tion of nature whicli runs thus: We must explain 
phenomena in the simplest way possible, and we are not 
\J allowed to attribute to animals higher psychic faculties 
than are requisite for the explanation of definite and 
well-observed facts. 

This is the only correct standard. It is applied in 



Popular or Scientific Animal Psychology. 7 

the following manner by scientific psychology in com- 
paring the activity of the human soul with that of the 
animal. We perceive in ourselves two main groups of 
psychic processes : unconsciously adaptive and con- 
sciously adaptive, or instinctive and intelligent processes. 
When an infant feels the pangs of hunger and manifests 
this feeling by cries and signs, the connection between 
the bodily want of food and the psychic sensation 
thereof, between the soul's affection of uneasiness and 
the exterior act of its manifestation by the muscles in 
crying, is instinctive, it is unconsciously adaptive. On 
closer attention we find, even in every-day life, a great 
number and variety of psychic processes, in which the 
connection of interior feelings, or of exterior percep- 
tions, with certain ideas, affections and exterior actions, 
is also unconsciously adaptive, independent of any act 
of deliberation or free volition. These psychic processes 
are the lowest and simplest forms of the activity of the 
human soul. Consequently we must not go beyond 
them in judging the manifestations of the psychic life 
of animals. We are not allowed to introduce delibera- 
tion and free volition for the sake of explanation, unless 
these simpler, unconsciously adaptive associations, prove 
to be inadequate. This is scientific psychology. Pseudo- 
psychology, however, proceeds very differently. In 
order to explain the activity of the animal soul it has 
recourse at once to the highest psychic functions in man, 
to the logical processes of the intellect and to the free 
volitions of the will. The poet who idealizes may justly 
do so, but not the philosopher, nor the naturalist who 
reasons philosophically. 

Which actions, then, are to be called instinctive f As 



8 Chapter I 

the very name suggests, instinctive actions are those 
which spring from impulses of the sensitive appetite 
and are accompanied by sense perceptions and sensile 
feelings. These two qualities distinguish them from 
reflex motions. Lastly, they are unconsciously adaptive, 
and thereby totally different from acts of the intellect. 

Everyone will allow, that instinctive actions are 
neither mere reflex phenomena nor intellectual functions. 
They are not mere reflex phenomena, for they contain, 
as experience teaches, a psychic element which cannot 
be eliminated without destroying their very essence. 
Reflex actions are those adaptive processes of a living- 
organism, which solely, but essentially depend on the 
irritation of certain motory nerves. They are specified 
by it alone, whether this activity of the motory nerves be 
connected with an irritation of the sensory nerves or not. 
Indeed, this latter connection is quite unessential to 
reflex activity. Consequently sensation is not an es- 
sential element of reflex acts. Thus the regular pump- 
ing motions of the heart, which we call palpitations, and 
the peristaltic motions of the bowels during digestion are 
reflex actions; but they are not necessarily perceptible. 
Similarly reflex is the act of sneezing, which is caused 
by the irritation of certain sensory nerves of the organs 
of breathing, or the twitchings of certain motory 
muscles, which are produced by irritations of the spinal 
ganglia. Therefore reflex actions are due solely to an 
influence of the nerve mechanism, and the psychic 
element of sensation is not essential to them. But this 
is not the case in any process that is truly instinctive. 
For in all such actions sensation participates as a cause 
in producing the corresponding activity. Therefore we 



Popular or Scientific Animal Psychology, 9 

cannot exclude a psychic element from the definition of 
"instinct" without ignoring its very nature and taking 
it for a reflex motion, as was done by Herbert 
Spencer, 1 who states that instinct is a "complex reflex- 
activity/' 

As some psychic element is essential to all instinctive 
actions, it can only be that element which distinguishes 
instinctive from intellectual functions. This is, however, 
the unconsciously adaptive connection of certain sensile 
affections with their corresponding activities. For the 
sake of illustration let us recur to our example of the 
babe whose cries are an instinctive manifestation of its 
feeling of hunger and its impulse for nourishment. 
Now, we do not call this manifestation intelligent, be- 
cause the tiny screamer does not cry with conscious 
intention. It is quite unaware of the suitableness of 
its very suitable clamor. Therefore the consciousness 
of the end is the chief element which distinguishes 
intelligent from instinctive actions. 

Hence, the following principle established by Prof. 
H. E. Ziegler in an essay on the "Notion of Instinct" 2 
is by no means tenable: "We must omit the element 
of consciousness in trying to determine the notion of 
instinct in a useful manner." Ziegler gives his reason 
for this principle. "Who can ever know when a dog, 
a lizard, a fish, a beetle, a snail, or an earth-worm 



J ) "Principles of Psychology," Vol. I, Chapt. 5, p. 451. Romanes 
attacks this definition in his "Mental Evolution in the Animal Kingdom" 
(1885), p. 283. 

2 ) "Verhandlungen der Deutschen Zoologischen Gesellschaft," 1892, 
pp. 121-136. The same lecture has been published as an appendix to his 
book: "Die Naturwissenschaft und die socialdemokratische Theorie." 
Stuttgart, 1893. 



10 Chapter L 

performs an action with or without consciousness? It 
is always precarious in natural sciences to introduce an 
element which cannot be examined or identified em- 
pirically, as a constituent part of any notion/' How- 
ever, Ziegler overlooked the fact, that in critical 
discussions on the psychic activities of animals we are 
forced to start from the analogy of the same activities 
in man ; otherwise our knowledge of animal psychology 
would be very limited. In our own psychic life, how- 
ever, we know from experience the difference between 
intentional and unintentional actions, a difference 
which is equally characteristic of their exterior mani- 
festations. But as this is so clearly the case in the 
psychic life of man, comparative psychology is forced 
to extend the distinction between intentional and 
unintentional actions to the psychic life of animals. 
Nor is this the only reason for doing so. For without 
this distinction animal psychology would merely become 
a department of nerve physiology. According to Ziegler 
the difference between instinctive and intelligent action 
consists in the fact that the former depends on hereditary 
nerve mechanisms, and the latter on the individual 
experience of single beings. Yet, reflex activities depend 
equally well on hereditary nerve dispositions ; hence, 
according to Ziegler's definition, the difference between 
instinct and reflex activity would altogether disappear. 
Therefore it cannot be adopted. It is true, the possibility 
of hereditary transmission of the instinctive associations 
of perceptions — as was long ago the doctrine of Aris- 
totelian Philosophy — is one of the distinctive features of 
instinct in contradistinction to intelligence; but it does 
not constitute the only, and much less the essential 



Popular or Scientific Animal Psychology. 11 

criterion of instinct. For reflex mechanisms are also 
hereditary; and even intelligence itself, taken as a 
faculty, is hereditary in the sense that all normal human 
beings enter into life gifted with this precious faculty. 
Hence the essence of instinct, in contradistinction to 
intelligence, should not be based so much on the 
possibility of hereditary transmission as on the want of 
intentionality. 



CHAPTER II. 

INSTINCT AND INTELLIGENCE ACCORDING TO MODERN 

ZOOLOGY. 

IN his above-mentioned essay Ziegler tries to explain 
the difference between instinct and intelligence in the 
following manner: "Those associations in the life of 
animals are due to intelligence which spring from 
impressions gained by individual sense perceptions; 
those, however, which do not depend on individual 
experience, are instinctive." This explanation, accord- 
ing to which only those psychic actions of the animal 
are said to be instinctive, which immediately arise from 
hereditary dispositions, whilst all those which presup- 
pose individual experience are due to intelligence, is, by 
the way, not at all new. It might simply be styled the 
animal psychology of modern zoology, especially since 
the days of Charles Darwin. Let us therefore carefully 
examine, whether this view of the question corresponds 
to the demands of scientific psychology. 

What is meant by ''hereditary instinct"? Complex 
representations or combinations of certain affections with 
certain impulses that are inherited complete as such, 
do not exist. 1 Only the psychic faculty, or the dis- 



*) We have previously proved that the assumption of innate, cogni- 
tive images (species objective innatae), in order to explain instinct, is 
highly improbable, even from a mere psychological standpoint ("Der 
Trichterwickler," p. 154 ff.). It is still less probable from a zoological 
(somatological) point of view, as every possible instinctive representation 
would have to pre-exist in the embryonic disposition of the animal in a 
definite, material part or element (whether it be an Id or a Determinant 
of Weismann). 

12 



Instinct and Intelligence According to Modern Zoology. 13 

position of the nervous system, from which those 
combinations originate, is inherited. From the possi- 
bility of hereditary transmission of this two-fold 
disposition springs what we call "hereditary instinct." 
Hence also innate instincts are due merely to a hereditary 
power of association. This argument, however, renders 
the difference between instinct and intelligence, w T hich is 
urged by modern psychology, untenable; for the latter 
calls "instinct" the hereditary sensitive power of asso- 
ciation, and "intelligence" the exercise of the same power 
thrown into activity by the sense perceptions of the 
animal. Let us substantiate this truth by an example. 
A young chicken is frightened at the very first sight 
of a wasp and is afraid to peck at it. Quite in keeping 
with modern zoological theories, this abstention is doubt- 
less due to instinct; for, even without any painful 
experience, the mere sight of the w T asp excites the feeling 
of fright by dint of a hereditary law of association. 
Now, let us suppose that in its youthful impetuosity in 
search of food, the chicken did not carefully examine 
the inviting titbit and pounced on the wasp and had been 
stung before it had time to form that instinctive 
association. According to the psychology of modern 
zoologists, this identical chicken is said to act from 
intelligence, whenever it carefully abstains in future 
from pecking at wasps. But is not this an evident abuse 
of the word "intelligence" ? The mere psychological 
analysis of the process furnishes a definite answer to this 
question. The very sight of a wasp immediately arouses, 
according to the innate laws of association of represen- 
tations not only the image of the first wasp, but also 
the imagination of the pain which the chicken felt in 



14 Chapter II. 

consequence of its former impetuous, but disastrous 
attack; this complex representation excites the affec- 
tion of fright, according to the same innate laws of 
association, and the wasp escapes unscathed and the 
chicken unstung. Essentially the same psychic laws 
underlie the actions in each case, in that of the chicken 
which was cautious at the first sight of the wasp, and in 
that of the same chicken which controlled its impetuosity 
after the painful experience of the wasp's sting. What 
right then have psychologists to ascribe intelligence in 
the latter case? From the standpoint of critical psy- 
chology both processes must be reduced to the sa:me 
causes. It is merely an act of the sensile memory, 
which distinguishes the doings in the second case from 
those of the first. The sensile memory, it is true, is not 
instinct in the stricter acceptance of the term; but it 
clearly belongs to the range of instinctive sensation, 
and not to intelligence. 

How then does it come to pass, that modern psy- 
chology speaks of "intelligence," when the chicken is 
induced by the wasp's sting to beware of all wasps in 
future? Simply because this pseudo-science takes 
sensile imagination for intelligence and arbitrarily puts 
the following logical syllogisms into the chicken's brain : 
That" object has a striking resemblance to the thing 
which stung me yesterday; now, I don't want to be 
stung again : therefore I'll leave that thing alone today. 
True, the reasoning power of man is able to resolve 
the simple process of the sensile association of animals 
into a logical deduction; but this fact merely warrants 
the conclusion, that man is endowed with intelligence, 
and not that the animal possesses it. Hence we must 



Instinct and Intelligence According to Modern Zoology. 15 

acknowledge either that the animal psychology of 
modern zoologists arbitrarily substitutes "syllogisms 
similar to those of man" for the simple sense functions 
of the animal, or that it plays not less arbitrarily with 
the term "intelligence." Both alternatives can only be 
explained by the fact that, as Wundt correctly observes, 
modern zoology is not free from the influence of the 
pseudo-psychology. 

In this connection it may be to the purpose to quote 
a passage from Charles Darwin's "Descent of Man," 
which illustrates the methods of certain psychologists in 
the Darwinian theory of evolution. "Of all the faculties 
of the human mind it will, I presume, be admitted that 
Reason stands at the summit. Few persons any longer 
dispute that animals possess some power of reasoning. 
Animals may constantly be seen (?) to pause, de- 
liberate, and resolve. It is a significant fact that the 
more the habits of any particular animal are studied by 
a naturalist, the more he attributes to reason and the 
less to unlearnt instincts. In future chapters we shall 
see, that some animals extremely low in the scale 
apparently display a certain amount of reason." 1 

Now, it is not our intention to comment on Darwin's 
bold statement, that observers of animal life find more 
intelligence and less instinct in animals the deeper they 
search and penetrate. The highly praised intelligence 
of ants has proved the very contrary according to the 
observations of Sir John Lubbock, and during my 
observations of ant life I have arrived more and more 
at the conviction, that the very phenomena which appear 
at first sight most similar to intellectual actions resolve 

*) "The Descent of Man," I (1871), p. 46. 



16 Chapter II. 

themselves, on closer examination, into the simplest 
instinctive processes. Altum's excellent studies on the 
life of birds, the classical observations of H. Fabre on 
the brooding of Hymenoptera, and quite recently the 
researches of W. Wagner on the architecture of spiders 
have all led forcibly to the same conclusion. 1 Our 
only reason for quoting the "Descent of Man" is to 
show, that in his endeavor to derive the mental faculties 
of man from the psychic faculties of the animal, Charles 
Darwin was preoccupied by the principles of pseudo- 
psychology, which is unable to distinguish correctly 
between sense perception and intelligence. Darwin 
considers it self-evident that animals have intelligence, 
because he takes for intelligence any combination of 
sense representations which is brought about by in- 
dividual experience. Consequently Wundt's verdict on 
the want of critical method in pseudo-psychology applies 
equally well to the "Descent of Man" by Charles 
Darwin. 

The example of the chicken proves that the "in- 
telligence" of modern psychology is no intelligence at 
all. It is merely an association of sense representations 
in which one element is derived from experience. This 
element is the feeling of pain caused by the wasp's sting. 
According to the laws of "contact association," as 
Wundt calls this combination of representations, it is 
reproduced as an image in the memory at the sight of 
any other wasp, and actuates the chicken's instinct of 
fear to avoid the wicked insect. There is not a shadow 



x ) "L'Industrie des Araneina." Memoires de l'Academ. Imper. 
des Sciences de Petersbourg (7) t. 40 (1894), n. 11. See also Emery's 
abstract in "Biologisches Centralblatt," 16, No. 3, S. 118 ff. 



Instinct and Intelligence According to Modern Zoology. 17 

of proof that this psychic process is due to intelligence. / 
On the contrary, psychological analysis compels us to 
explain this so-called intellectual act by the same psychic 
laws which guided the chicken when it happily avoided 
being stung by the wasp the very first time they came 
into contact. 

Should we then call the behavior of the chicken in 
the second case instinctive or intelligent? As its avoid- 
ance of the wasp springs from a sensile impulse and not 
from intellectual deliberation and is ruled only by 
sensitive knowledge, we must necessarily call it in- 
stinctive. Still it is not instinctive in the strictest sense 
of the term, because it contains an element of individual 
sensitive experience. It is, however, undoubtedly 
instinctive in a wider sense, and we are far more 
justified in extending the notion of instinctive actions to 
those which contain an element of sensitive experience 
than is modern psychology in making the notion of 
"sensitive experience" in the animal coincide with the 
notion of "intelligence." The latter conception leads to 
obvious contradictions, as the following examples clearly 
demonstrate. 

In full accord with other psychologists who have 
recently written on animal life, the English scientist 
George Romanes 1 calls only those adaptive . actions of 
the animal instinctive which are "antecedent to 
individual experience," and designates as intelligent 
all the rest which result from an experimental 
source. (P. 17.) Now, only a few pages above 
(P. 13) the same Romanes explained the difference 



*) "Animal Intelligence," oth edition, London, 1892, 



18 Chapter II. 

between instinct and reflex activity by the following 
examples. A new-born infant does not close its eyes 
at the approach of a dangerous object; it only learns to 
do so by and by, as the result of experience. Thence 
Romanes concludes that the closing of the eyes at the 
approach of danger was originally an instinctive and 
not a mere reflex activity, which it gradually becomes 
"by repeated exercise. Again, Romanes calls the suck- 
ing of a new-born infant a mere reflex activity, because 
it does not, in his opinion, contain a psychic element. 
But only when a babe has repeatedly experienced the 
pleasure of sucking and then begins to seek its mother's 
breast, are we justified, according to Romanes, in de- 
signating its action as instinctive in the proper sense of 
the word. 

Now, according to his own statement and the views 
of modern animal psychologists, this "properly in- 
stinctive action" evidently falls under the definition of 
intelligent and not of instinctive activity, as it is precisely 
the individual experience of the babe that in their theory 
renders these actions "intelligent." Therefore, Romanes, 
with all other modern animal psychologists must either 
designate the instinctive closing of the eyelids on the 
part of a babe that is a few days old and its searching 
for its mother's breast as "intelligent actions," and that is 
absurd, or, they must acknowledge that their notion of 
intelligence cannot be defended. 

The latter alternative is surely preferable. The 
psychic development of man clearly shows that many 
actions which presuppose an individual sense experience 
can be instinctive in the wider sense of the term. A 
burnt child shuns the fire and proves the truth of this 



Instinct and Intelligence According to Modem Zoology, 19 

proverb by simple associations of representations, long 
before it has arrived at the use of reason. 

Thus, we again arrive at the inevitable conclusion, 
that the notion of intelligence of modern animal psy- 
chologists cannot be maintained in face of a critical 
analysis. It is unsound and has been falsified by the 
influence of "pseudo-psychology." It is wrong to style 
all those psychic actions "intelligent" which presuppose 
the experience of the animal, just as it is wrong to 
designate only those as "instinctive" which do not depend 
on experience. 

Does a young dog, that sniffs at a bone for the first 
time and feels impelled by the enticing odor to crunch 
it, act from intelligence or from instinct? The answer 
of every modern psychologist will evidently be : From 
instinct ; for the dog does not know by experience that 
bones taste well. But if the same dog finds a second 
bone, and its previous experience of pleasure in gnawing 
the former bone helps to whet its appetite, then 
"intelligence" is said to cooperate side by side with 
instinct. Or when a young ant, say Formica sanguinea, 
meets for the first time a genuine guest, a Lomechusa 
strumosa, living in the same nest, and on touching the 
beetle with her feelers perceives an agreeable odor and 
immediately begins to lick the beetle, she is said to act 
from "instinct ;" but when she licks it a second time, after 
having once tasted the very agreeable flavor of the 
ethereal matter secreted from the yellow hair-tufts of 
the beetle, "intelligence" is said to have a part in this 
second and in all subsequent acts. Is it not obvious that 
we have to do with an abuse of the term "intelligence" ? 
The only idea to be conveyed by the term is an asso- 



20 Chapter II 

ciation of sense representations in which one element is 
taken from experience. This association, however, is 
of an instinctive nature, because it follows the laws of 
unconscious association which belong to the sphere of 
sensitive life; it has absolutely nothing to do with 
intelligence in its proper meaning. 
^ Thus it is evident from these two examples that 
modern animal psychology not only makes an arbitrary 
use of the term "intelligence," but also that it shows no 
little inconsistency in the explanation of psychic animal 
activities. The dog that was induced by the smell of 
^*/ the first bone to crunch it, made in the very act the 
sensitive experience that the bone had a pleasant taste. 
The ant, likewise, that was instinctively led by the smell 
of the Lomechusa to lick it, enjoyed at once the sensitive 
experience, that her action was highly agreeable. Con- 
sequently, the actions of the dog and of the ant became, 
in that very moment, according to modern psychology, 
intelligent instead of instinctive actions; for the sensitive 
agreeableness of the respective taste perceptions is an 
element of experience, and this element of experience 
caused the dog and the ant to continue their formerly 
instinctive actions. Hence it follows that instinctive 
activity ceases to be instinctive in the very moment its 
execution begins, and is changed into an intelligent ac- 
tion. Consequently exterior instinctive actions cease to 
be possible, they become at once intelligent; for the 
performance of any instinctive activity is agreeable to 
the animal, or averts displeasure from it, and it is pre- 
cisely on account of this agreeble sensation that the 
animal performs those very actions. To repeat it once 
more: whosoever establishes the sensile experience of 



Instinct and Intelligence According to Modern Zoology. 21 

the animal as an essential criterion of intelligence, is 
logically forced to declare that all instinctive exterior 
actions of the animal are intelligent. But this conse- 
quence is untenable and will hardly be admitted by any 
rational naturalist. Therefore, the modern notion of 
animal intelligence which involves this consequence is 
equally untenable and false. 

A similar proof that this conception of animal in- 
telligence leads to inextricable contradictions, could be 
easily furnished, and illustrated by many examples. 
But we would never come to an end and would have 
continually to repeat the same "ceterum censeo." Let 
one illustration suffice. For this purpose we choose the 
so-called animal instinct of cleanliness, 1 because the 
sensile experience of the pleasure caused by a given 
action is intimately connected with this instinct and 
closely related to the feeling or perception which excites 
the action. This stimulus consists mostly in an irrita- 
tion, a painful itching of the skin, which animals try to 
soothe by such actions as licking, scratching, etc. Now, 
any psychologist will allow that animals as well as man 
perform these actions instinctively, when they feel the 
irritation. Yet, a more accurate analysis of the process 
makes it evident that the consistent zoologist ought to 
say : "The animal begins, at least for the first time, to 
scratch itself instinctively, but in the same moment its 
action becomes intelligent; for the element of experi- 
ence, the pleasure which arises from the action, is the 
proper motive of its continuation and repetition ; and all 



l ) See P. Balliou, "De l'instinct de la propcrte chez les animaux," 
2d edition. Bazas, 1895. 



22 Chapter II. 

actions that are caused by the sensile experience of 
pleasure or pain, are intelligent — ergo." 

But let us return to the term "intelligence" and in- 
vestigate its proper meaning which has been obscured 
by pseudo-psychology. The question of the notional 
constituents of this term is not an empty verbal conten- 
tion, nor a dispute about trifles, but an elementary ques- 
tion of the utmost importance for scientific animal 
psychology. 



CHAPTER III. 

WHAT IS INTELLIGENCE, AND WHAT IS INSTINCT? 

WHAT is "intelligence" ? According to the etymo- 
logical meaning of the term, and the concept 
hitherto attached to it by the scientific psychologists of 
all ages, intelligence-intellect, understanding-exclusive- 
ly signifies the power of perceiving the relations of con- 
cepts to one another, and of drawing conclusions there- 
from. It essentially includes the power of abstraction, 
the faculty of collecting from a number of single repre- 
sentations that which they all have in common, and, 
thereby, of forming general concepts. It includes fur- 
thermore a deliberative power which recognizes the rela- 
tion between means and end, between a subject and its 
actions, and, consequently, endows the intelligent being 
with self -consciousness and with rational, free activity. 

Of late the attempt has been frequently made to 
represent intellect and reason as two different faculties, 
and "intellect" but not "reason" was attributed to ani- 
mals. Yet, such a separation cannot be admitted. He 
who is endowed with intellect, necessarily possesses 
reason, and he who has no reason cannot have an intel- 
lect. This is evident from the following considerations. 

In as far as it differs from intellect, reason signifies 
the power of adapting means to ends, and of acting with 
a certain purpose, reasonably. This meaning of the 
word is sanctioned by general usage. It conveys noth- 
ing beyond the power of practically adjusting one's 
actions to the theoretical knowledge of the intellect. An- 



24 Chapter III. 

other difference between intellect (intellectus) and 
reason (ratio) consists in the fact, that the former signi- 
fies the immediate insight into a truth and the latter the 
power of drawing conclusions from the truth that has 
been perceived. 1 But this is immaterial to our present 
question, 2 as both distinctions imply only a notional, 
not a real difference between intellect and reason, which 
are obviously not two different entities, but only differ- 
ent manifestations of one and the same mental power. 
He who possesses intellect is able to perceive the rela- 
tions that exist between different things and to draw 
conclusions from them ; consequently he is able to grasp 
the relation between means and end, to adapt the former 
to the latter ; he is able to act reasonably, and therefore 
he possesses reason likewise. Hence it is obvious that 
all those who ascribe intellect to animals, are logically 
forced to attribute reason to them. 

The "Reform Philosopher" Immanuel Kant has, it 
is true, excogitated another difference between intellect 
and reason. 3 Still in calling the former a power of 



x ) See Thorn, de Aq., Summ. theol. 1 q. 59, a. 1 ad 1: "Intellectus 
et ratio differunt quantum ad modum cognoscendi; quia scillicet in- 
tellectus cognoscit simplici intuitu, ratio vero discurrendo de uno in 
aliud." This distinction between intellectus and ratio, commonly held in 
Scholastic Philosophy, is not quite covered by the distinction between 
intellect and reason made by modern usage, since the intellectus is more 
perfect than the ratio, whilst vice versa the reason is more perfect than 
the intellect. 

2 ) In as far as the power of drawing conclusions (ratio) implies an 
imperfection in opposition to the immediate perception of truths (intel- 
lectus), it is apparently not a characteristic note of intellect in general, 
but only of an imperfect intellect, and as the pretended intellect of 
animals is not supposed to be more perfect, but less perfect than that of 
man, this moment is of no importance in our present investigation. 

3 ) "Kritik der Reinen Vernunft" (Kants Werke 2, Leipzig, 1838), 
p. 280. 



What is Intelligence, and What is Instinct? 25 

rules, and the latter a power of principles, he departs 
from the old distinction only in word. But when he 
adds that reason is endowed with notions not acquired 
from the intellect, he makes a new, but a wrong and 
inconsistent statement, which he has entirely failed to 
substantiate. Anyhow, it has no bearing on our present 
consideration, especially as it will hardly find an advo- 
cate among modern zoologists, who try not only to 
derive the concepts of reason from those of the intellect, 
but even the concepts of the intellect exclusively from 
sensitive experience. 

Thus we are fully justified in considering intellect 
'and reason as synonymous, as far as their reality is 
concerned. Romanes, 1 one of the most prominent rep- 
resentatives of modern animal psychology, is of the 
same opinion. He regards both faculties as manifesta- 
tions of one and the same mental power of ratiocination. 
Still he would like the term '"intellect" to be applied 
more to the lower, and "reason" more to the higher 
degrees of those manifestations. 

Modern animal psychology does not seem to be 
aware of what is meant even by the lowest grade of 
"a power of formal reasoning" Otherwise it is hard 
to understand, how so many animal psychologists of 
moderate tendency agree with us in mercilessly con- 
demning those who "humanize" the psychic faculties of 
the animal, and still ascribe to it a power of formal 
reasoning which differs only in degree, but is essentially 
of the same nature as that of man. They decline to 
equip the animal with "syllogisms similar to the human," 

x ) "Animal Intelligence," p. 14. 



26 Chapter III. 

but forget that any, even the simplest formal syllogism, 
is "a syllogism similar to ours," and will never cease to 
be so, as long as psychological notions are submitted to 
a critical analysis. A confusion of ideas evidently under- 
lies the modern phrase of "different degrees" of intelli- 
gence. 1 Otherwise modern animal psychologists could 
not ascribe to animals a power of formal reasoning and 
deny it in the same breath. 

Although Romanes concedes that intelligence is a 
power of formal reasoning, he nevertheless wants all 
those activities of the animal, which result from sense 
experience, to be regarded as intelligent. This is the 
criterion of distinction between instinct and intelligence, 
which he and nearly all modern zoologists strenuously 
defend. But it has been adequately proven, that this 
criterion is untenable. For even in human beings there 
are activities due to sense experience, which plainly 
result from mere combinations of sense representations 
and not from formal syllogisms ; and as it is these 
very combinations that modern animal psychology calls 
"the intelligence of animals," we must reject this view 
of animal intelligence as absolutely uncritical, and trace 
it back with Wundt to the fatal influence of that 
"pseudo-psychology", which wantonly changes the 
actions of the animal psyche into logical processes of 
thought. Such a distinction between instinct and intelli- 
gence must be abandoned. 

How are we, then, to distinguish instinct from intelli- 
gence in the psychic life of animals. The answer to this 

*) See Reimarus, "Allgemeine Betrachttmgen ueber die Triebe der 
Thiere," Nos. 15, 16, 123. Even Alfred Espinas ("Des Societes 
animates," 2d edition, 1878, p. 202) avows that it is wrong to take the 
cognitive power of the animal for a "moindre degre de raison." 



What is Intelligence, and What is Instinct? 27 

question is contained in our former statements. All 
spontaneous actions are instinctive which are not due to 
intelligence; consequently all those spontaneous actions 
of animals which do not manifest a power of formal 
abstraction must be referred to the sphere of instinct. 

But what is instinct? 1 It is the principle of those 
actions which we call instinctive. These actions are due 
to impulse (p. 7) and emanate from the natural incli- 
nations of the sensitive appetite ; they are not reflex 
phenomena but "spontaneous actions/" 2 because they 
are performed under the influence of the imagination 
and sensitive emotion; they are not intelligent actions, 
because they are carried out without consciousness of the 
purpose of the respective activity. In a being which 
possesses instinct and intelligence, one and the same 
exterior action can be partly instinctive and partly intel- 
ligent, as it is in man. But we are not allowed to admit 
the cooperation of intelligence in the actions of animals, 
before we have proved the impossibility of explaining 
them by instinct alone. 

Consequently instinct signifies an impulse of the 
sensitive appetite to certain objects and acts, the suitable- 
ness of which transcends the range of knowledge of the 
agent that performs them. This is the first and proper 
meaning of the word "instinct." It signifies secondly 
the peculiarity of sensitive cognition, by which the sensi- 



x ) We cannot possibly dwell upon the innumerable old and recent 
definitions of instinct. 

2 ) This is the reason why sight, hearing, smell, and in general all 
the activities of sensitive cognition as such and apart from their relation 
to the exercise of the sensitive appetite, are not ''instinctive actions." but 
only the elements of such activity. This suggestion indicates the solution 
of a difficulty raised by different critics against our division of spon- 
taneous activities. 



28 Chapter III. 

tive appetite is guided. 1 This peculiarity consists in 
representing as pleasant to the sentient being what is 
really useful to it, and simultaneously guiding its 
physical powers to attain that object. 2 This is the 
reason why all instinctive activity is unconsciously 
adaptive. Owing to this peculiarity the formal object of 
instinctive knowledge seems to transcend the range of 
sensitive cognition and to contain relations which are not 
perceptible to the senses. 3 Consequently the scholastics 
styled it "species insensatse", and called the cognitive 
power of the animal "the power of appreciation" (vis 
aestimativa), 4 because it endowed the animal with a 

1 ) Thus we read in tthe Conimbricenses (Commentarii Coll. Con- 
imbricens, S. J. in 8 libros Physicor. Aristotelis (1592), lib. 2, c. 9, q. 4, 
a. 2) : Instinctus brutorum nihil aliud est quam operatio phantasiae, de- 
terminata ad judicium convenientis aut incommodi, determinansque appet- 
itum ad fugam vel prosecutionem. Haec assertio est philosopborum 
communis. 

2 ) As far as the use of these powers is not predetermined by innate 
nerve mechanisms, and only needs actuating by definite sensations. 

3 ) The following example is often used as an illustration: The sheep 
recognizes in the wolf not only an object of certain color and dimension, 
but also its natural enemy which it must avoid. This latter relation is 
the species insensata. On the species insensatae see espec. Suarez, "De 
anima," I. 3, c. 9, n. 5, 12, 13. 

4 ) Suarez, "De anima," I. 3, c. 30, n. 7: "Aestimativa describitur 
sensus interior potens apprehendere sub ratione convenientis et discon- 
venientis . . . haec siquidem operatio communis etiam est omnibus 
animantibus" (man and brute) . . . "cuius munus est movere appetitum 
sensitivum, qui non nisi a ratione convenientis vel disconvenientis 
movetur. Ideo ergo aestimativa dicitur, quia de rebus ipsis aliud 
aestimat, quam quod exterius apparet." And Thomas of Aquin had 
previously observed (Summ. Theol. I. 2, q. 4, a. 2 ad 2) : "Apprehensio 
sensitiva non attingit ad communem rationem boni, sed ad aliquod bonum 
particulare, quod est delectabile. Et ideo secundum appetitum sensiti- 
vum, qui est in animalibus, operationes quaeruntur propter delecta- 
tionem." Therefore, what is objectively useful must be represented as 
subjectively pleasant to the animal by its instinctive power of cognition. 
This combination of the useful with the pleasant, which is brought about 
by the suitable disposition of sensitive cognition and appetite, constitutes 
the real nature of instinct, as we shall at once proceed to demonstrate. 



What is Intelligence, and What is Instinct? 29 

certain likeness to man and made it fully competent to 
direct its own activity in a suitable manner. 

Consequently instinct signifies both from an etymo- 
logical and historical point of view, a sensitive impulse 
which induces a being to perform certain actions the 
suitableness of which is beyond the perception of the 
agent that performs them. 1 

It is instinct that induces the male larva of the stag- 
beetle (Lucanus cervus), before its transformation into 
a pupa, to produce a cocoon, the size of which is far 
greater than that of the pupa, and thus to provide in 
advance for the length of the future antlers of the imago 
which is to come forth from that larva. It has never 
even seen a developed stag-beetle, and no amount of 
"reflection" on its part could hit upon the clever idea of 
its eventual destiny to become a male stag-beetle with 
mighty antlers on its head. It is instinct that impels the 
female of the leaf-roller (Rhynchites betulse) to make 
an incision into a birch-leaf after an extremely ingenious 
mathematico-technical problem, that was — by the way — 
not introduced into human science before 1673, and then 
to roll up that leaf in the shape of a funnel as a depos- 
itory for its eggs. 2 Neither by experience nor by reflec- 
tion could the little weevil gain an idea of that problem, 
nor could it even know that it would lay "eggs" at all, 
from which young leaf-rollers would eventually develop. 
It is instinct that makes the young bird which is unac- 

x ) We say expressly: "the suitableness of which is beyond its per- 
ception," for the immediate object to which any instinctive activity is 
directed and this activity itself are the subject matter of sensitive cog- 
nition. 

2 ) See Debey, "Beitraege zur Lebens und Entwicklungsgeschichte 
der Ruesselkaefer aus der Familie der Attelabiden," Bonn, 1846. Was- 
mann, "Der Trichterwickler," Muenster, 1884. 



30 Chapter II L 

quainted with any nest of its own species, collect after 
pairing little stalks and blades of grass and similar ma- 
terial for a warm nest, in which its fledglings are to be 
hatched; for neither by experience nor by thought or 
reflection could it know before its first season of breed- 
ing, that it would even lay eggs, and that these eggs 
would have to be hatched, in order to produce a new 
generation of its own kind. It is due to instinct, when 
a dog that suffers from tape-worm eats Artemisia ab- 
sinthium, although it otherwise never touches this plant ; 
for a study of medicine would be requisite to hit upon 
such a suitable treatment by its own experience. It is 
instinct, finally, that causes the new-born babe to express 
its feeling of hunger by crying and seeking its mother's 
breast; 1 for it could not possibly have previously recog- 
nized by experience or its own thinking the suitableness 
of its cries and its attempts to suck. 

What is it, then, that essentially characterizes these 
different instinctive actions? It is the circumstance 
that their suitableness lies beyond the perception of the 
respective agent. The unconscious suitableness (adap- 
tiveness) is, consequently, the essential criterion of 
instinctive, in contradistinction to intelligent actions. 

Not without purpose was it pointed out in each of 
the previous examples that the respective agent not 
only lacked experimental knowledge of the suitableness 
of its acts, but that it likewise was unable to attain that 
knowledge by means of its own deliberate reflections. 
Animal psychology considers in a one-sided manner 
only the former point of view, and neglects the latter. 



*) This example was used by St. Thomas of Aquin (2, (list. 20, q. 
2, a. 2 ad 5). 



W hat is Intelligence, and What is Instinct ? 31 

The human mind has made great inventions and dis- 
coveries by arriving through speculation at the knowl- 
edge of facts which were not known from experience. 
No one will, on that account, ascribe these discoveries 
to instinct and not to intelligence. Thus it is like- 
wise a wrong and one-sided proceeding on the part of 
modern zoology to assign individual sense experience 
as the essential criterion of intelligent, in contradis- 
tinction to instinctive actions. 

Nevertheless, we do not intend to deny that other 
auxiliary criteria of instinctive actions exist beyond the 
essential criterion which we have just established. One 
of these secondary marks is the complete perfection 
with which many instinctive actions are performed, 
without previous practice or experience on the part of 
the animal, so that they need not be learnt, but depend 
almost entirely on inherited dispositions. Another auxil- 
iary character of instinctive actions is the constant uni- 
formity with which they are performed by almost every 
individual of the same species. Yet, these two auxiliary 
marks are by no means essential criteria. For there 
are a few hereditary instincts that require previous 
practice and hence individual experience for their per- 
fect development. Thus the so-called "raptorial" in- 
stincts of cats must be gradually developed through 
the instinctive "playfulness" of the kitten, which does 
not so far perceive the purpose of an amusement that 
is meanwhile only pleasant to it. 1 Moreover, the exer- 
cise of hereditary instincts in members of the same 
species is modified by the variety of individual dispo- 



*) See Gross, "The Play of Animals" (German, 2d edition. Yena, 
1896). 



32 Chapter III. 

sitions, and the differences of the sense perceptions that 
arouse individual instinctive impulses. Hence it is that 
specific uniformity forms only a changeable and by no 
means essential characteristic of instinctive actions. 
We may indeed state, that those manifestations of 
psychic life in animals which are performed by all 
members of a species according to hereditary laws and 
without previous experience in a constant and uniform 
manner are certainly due to instinct and not to intelli- 
gence; but we are not allowed to invert the proposition 
and say that only those manifestations of psychic life 
in animals are instinctive which are performed by all 
members of a species according to hereditary laws, and 
without previous experience in a uniform manner, whilst 
all the rest are intelligent. Such an inversion would be 
false logic; for its legitimacy must first be proved. 
Yet, neither Ziegler nor Romanes nor any modern 
psychologist has ever demonstrated that only the 
hereditary and the specifically uniform psychic activities 
of animals are of an instinctive nature. 

Very different, however,., is the distinctive character 
which we have established. It alone holds good, exclu- 
sively of any other. For we are not only allowed to 
say: Those spontaneous actions must be regarded as 
instinctive in which the agent is not conscious of the 
purpose of the act, but we have proved that only these 
actions must be considered as instinctive, whilst the rest 
are intelligent. Consequently we can express the cri- 
terion of instinct and intelligence in the following man- 
ner: only those spontaneous actions of animals are to 
be called intelligent in which consciousness of the end 
can be proven, all the rest have to be regarded as in- 



What is Intelligence, and What is Instinct? 33 

stinctive; for intelligence and consciousness of the end. 1 
are identical realities. 

We are not allowed to attribute to animals higher 
psychic faculties than their actions manifest. This in- \y^ 
contestable principle of scientific psychology not only 
entitles but forces us to regard only those spontaneous 
actions of animals as intelligent in which consciousness 
of the end, the power of formal reasoning and of mental 
abstraction manifest themselves clearly and without a 
shadow of doubt. All other actions, however, which 
can be fully explained by the laws of combined sense 
perceptions must be counted as instinctive, and not as 
intelligent. There is no possible intermediate member. 

The foregoing deductions lead to the only legitimate 
conclusion which can be maintained in a critical estimate 
of the psychic life of animals. All those psychic ac- 
tions of animals are instinctive that spring from their 
sensitive powers of perception and appetite, and for the 
adequate explanation of which it is not necessary to 
appeal to intelligence in its full and proper signification. 

Whilst instinctive, in contradistinction to intelligent 
actions, have the essential characteristic of not emanat- 
ing from individual deliberation, and consciousness of 



*) By consciousness of the end we understand the perception of the 
■final relation, which Thomas of Aquin C'Summ. Theol." I. 2, q. 6, a. 2) 
appropriately describes: "Perfecta quidem finis cognitio est, quando non 
solum apprehenditur res, quae est finis, sed eiam cognoscitur ratio -finis 
et proportio eius, quod ordinatur ad finem ipsum." The formal con- 
sciousness of the end which we called the essence of intelligence is not 
identical with adequate consciousness of the end, which comprehends the 
knowledge of all the ends which can possibly be attached to a certain 
action; for, in order to have a formal (real) consciousness of the end, it 
suffices, that any one purpose of the action be perceived and aimed at. 



34 Chapter III. 

the end on the part of the agent, their positive essence 
and their characteristic peculiarity consist, in contra- 
distinction to reflex motions, in being due to impulse 
and in being determined and directed by the sense 
knowledge of the animal. Hence, they are caused by 
the powers of sensitive perception and appetite, and the 
hereditary disposition of this twofold power is their 
source and principle. 

To the powers of sensitive cognition which guide 
instinctive actions, evidently belong not only the ex- 
terior senses (sensus externi) sight, hearing, taste, smell, 
and touch, the last of which comprises all the sensations 
cf the skin, but also the interior sense (sensus internus), 
which perceives the interior states of the agent and feels 
the pleasant or disagreeable impression which the object 
of the exterior sense perception makes upon it. Hereto 
must be added the power of sensitive imagination (phan- 
tasia) and a sensile memory (memoria), which repro- 
duces exterior sense perceptions and interior sensile feel- 
ings, and combines them one with the other and with 
new sense perceptions according to the nature and the 
laws of sensitive imaginations. Because the interior 
sense, the sensitive imagination and memory represent 
as pleasant to the agent what is objectively useful for its 
preservation and that of its kind, and thereby induce it 
to perform instinctive actions which they guide and 
regulate, they endow the animal moreover with a sensi- 
tive power of appreciation (vis aestimativa.) 1 Yet, this 
power of appreciation is not a new reality, it is only 



x ) We have developed our views on the power of appreciation in 
animals more fully in the seventh chapter of our book "Der Trichter- 
wickler" (Rhynchites betulae), 



What is Intelligence, and What is Instinct? 35 

distinguished in name from the interior sense and from 
the sensitive powers of imagination and memory, and 
these, in turn, differ only in name, not in reality from 
one another : they are different manifestations of the ac- 
tivity of one and the same power of sensitive cognition. 

It will interest modern men of science to learn that 
Thomas of Aquin attributed to animals the powers of 
sensitive perception and appetite in the very same terms 
as we have done, and that he divided the interior sense 
powers in a similar manner. 1 This fact alone is 
weighty evidence for the truth, that the cherished and 
unceasingly repeated reproach of modern scientists 
against scholastic philosophy of making a machine of 
the animal, in letting it be exclusively guided by a 
''blind instinct/' is due to a total ignorance of the teach- 
ings of that philosophy which it has become fashionable 
to disparage and discredit. 

Consequently the instinctive actions of animals are 
divided into tw T o head groups : into instinctive actions 
in the strict, and into instinctive actions in the wider 
acceptance of the term. As instances of the former 
class we have to regard those which immediately spring 
from the inherited dispositions of the powers of sensile 
cognition and appetite; and as instances of the latter 
those which indeed proceed from the same inherited 
dispositions, but through the medium of sense experi- 
ence. The additional fact that a dog or an ant avails 
itself in the furtherance of its innate instincts of new 
combinations of representations which it has acquired 
from sense experience by the aid of these same in- 

l ) "Summ. Theol.," I. q. 78, a. 4. The question whether those four 
faculties differ in reality, or only in name, is of minor importance. 



86 Chapter III. 

stinctive dispositions, by no means destroys the instinct- 
ive nature of the respective psychic processes, nor does 
this fact render them "intelligent." 

What then is instinct, this mysterious principle of 
instinctive actions ? In its inmost nature, instinct is the 
hereditary, suitable (adaptive) disposition of the powers 
of sensitive cognition and appetite in the animal. For 
it is from this disposition that the sensitive affections 
(passions), as well as the various exterior activities 
elicited by the acts of the sensitive appetite, derive 
their origin ; this disposition likewise governs their per- 
formance in conformity w 7 ith their respective laws. It 
includes not only the specifically peculiar suitableness 
(adaptiveness) which appears in the activity of artificial 
instincts, but also the suitableness of the whole range 
of manifestations of sense life which are more or less 
common to all animals. This suitable disposition of 
sensile cognition and appetite explains, on the one hand, 
the keenness of instinctive perception which is often so 
marvellous and apparently surpasses human intelligence. 
For this reason it was styled in scholastic philosophy 
"vi$ aestimativa" and u participatio quae dam rationis," 
while more recent philosophers called it an "analogum 
rationis" (Wolff), a "power of divination," "clairvoy- 
ance," "immediate knowledge." On the other hand it 
explains the not less striking blindness and narrowness 
cf this very same instinctive cognition which places it 
in palpable contrast to intelligence, and clearly manifests 
that the profound wisdom and premeditation displayed 
in instinctive activity cannot possibly arise from any 
reflection and deliberation on the part of the animal. 
The hereditary adaptive disposition of sensile cognition 



What is Intelligence, and What is Instinct? 37 

and appetite 1 which we call instinct, is furthermore 
specifically appropriate, it differs in the different kinds 
of animals. Whatever is naturally suitable for the 
preservation of a peculiar species, and for the attain- 
ment of its special purpose and destination, is made 
pleasant to that species by its specific disposition of 
faculties, and thus the irrational being can work out its 
natural end merely by its sensile cognition and appe- 
tite. Man, too, has an instinct; but he has more than 
instinct, he has also intelligence and volition; these it is 
that he must follow, if he wishes to attain his end and 
to lead a life worthy of a human being, and disdains to 
lower himself to the level of the brute. 

This hereditary disposition of sensile cognition and 
appetite which is in reality the very root and source of 
instinct can be considered from a psychic or a somatic 
point of view. It is psychic in as far as it is founded in 
the nature of the animal soul ; but it is somatic in as far 



*) We could advance several quotations from scholastic philoso- 
phers of former ages to show that this view of instinct is not new. 
(See p. 45, note 1.) George de Rhodes S. J. ("Philos. Peripatet." 
1671 lib. 2, disp. 17, q. 6, sect. 6, p. 493) says: "Videtur ergo ilium 
(instinctum) nee esse qualitatem ullam superadditam phantasiae bruti, 
nee species a Deo indita sed esse ipsum sensum internum bruti, quate- 
nus vim habet apprehendendi aliquid ut conveniens vel disconveniens, et 
sic illud appetendi aut refugiendi." How the objectively convenient is 
represented to the animal through its sense-cognition is explained by P. 
Lossada S. J. ("Cursus Philos. Coll. Salmanticensis" [1735] p. 3, disp. 
5, c. 4, No. 128) in the following way: "Avis ergo, dum paleam colligit 
reipsa utilem ad nidificandum, non cognoscit utilitatem ut talem, sed 
aliquam insensatam rationem delectabilis apprehendit in motibus ipsis 
aut actionibus colligendi, deferendi et collocandi apposite ad nidi fabri- 
cam. Quod autem sic apprehendit pro tali tempore, provenit ab in- 
stinctu seu determinatione naturae." In other words: It comes from 
the natural disposition of its sensile cognition and appetite which we 
call instinct that the objectively convenient is represented in a suitable 
manner to the animal as subjectively pleasant. 



38 Chapter III. 

as it is most essentially connected with, and dependent 
on the specific condition of the nervous system, of the 
organs of sense perception, and of the exterior instru- 
ments and vegetative organs of the animal body. Its 
somatic nature, above all, will be more and more eluci- 
dated by the progress of modern biology, physiology 
and anatomy, although the exact nature of instinct will 
forever remain an enigma. The progress of science 
will, at any rate, make the invention of "animal intelli- 
gence" appear more and more as a Deus ex machina 
which can never be brought to fit into the essential ele- 
ments of psychic animal faculties. Scholastic phil- 
osophy is, without doubt, correct when it reduces the 
whole life of the animal to a life of sensitive instinct. 

It is a known fact that all scholasHc schools 
answered the question : Are animals guided by their 
natural instinct (Utrum bruta solo instinctu naturali 
agantur?) in the affirmative without reserve. 1 This 
answer can only be understood in the supposition that' 
as often as the term "instinct" was used in contradistinc- 
tion to intelligence, it was not taken merely as a con- 
stituent part of the sensitive power of cognition and 
appetite, but as the adaptive, natural disposition of ani- 
mal sensation, which constitutes the vital principle that 
governs the spontaneous actions of the animal. 2 Oth- 
erwise the answer could not have been simply affirm- 
ative, without essential restrictions; for apart from and 
beyond inherited, instinctive knowledge scholastic 



*) See also J. J. Urraburru, S. J., "Instit. Philos., Psychol." P. 
1 (1894), p. 843 seq. 

2 ) In Scholastic terms "the specific principle of animal purposive- 
ness" (apprehensio et expansio speciiica). 



What is Intelligence, and IV hat is Instinct? 39 

philosophy ascribed to the animal a sensile memory 
(memoria sensitiva), and a power of perfecting inborn 
instincts through sense experience (expectatio casuum 
similium) ; it acknowledged in the animal not only 
complete hereditary talents for certain activities, but to 
a certain degree talents and abilities acquired by sense 
experience and by practice (habitus acquisiti). 1 Hence 
in stating that the animal was guided merely by its 
natural instinct, scholasticism apparently used the term 
instinct in our broader meaning. 

The previous discussions make it evident that in- 
stinctive life in reality coincides with sensitive, whilst 
intelligence is identical with mental life. Instinct sig- 
nifies the peculiarity of the powers of sensitive cognition 
and appetite, whilst intelligence expresses the peculiarity 
of the mental power of cognition and stands in insepar- 
able relation to free volition, the corresponding mental 
power of the spiritual appetite. Consequently the ques- 
tion, whether animals possess intelligence as well as 
instinct, is, in reality, identical with the other: Do ani- 
mals possess a mental, besides a sensitive, life? 

In modern animal psychology the term "mental fac- 
ulties" has been grossly misapplied. The 'tendency of 
materialism which is to obliterate as much as possible 
the differences between the animal psyche and the hu- 
man mind has led to the denial of essential differences 
between sensile and spiritual faculties. It ignores the 
rules of critical analysis. Moreover the modern theory 
of evolution which demands the "natural" development 
of man from the animal as a "postulate of science," has 



/ 



*) See S. Thomas, "Summa theol.," 1, 2, q. 50, a. 3 ad 2. 



40 Chapter III. 

contributed not a little to this confusion of ideas. Mani- 
festations of spiritual faculties were understood, in the 
scientific psychology of former times, to include those 
psychic actions which transcend the sphere of sensitive 
cognition and appetite : namely, intellect and free will. 
The pseudo-psychology, however, of such men as Scheit- 
lin, Brehm, and other "modern animal psychologists," 
and, among them even Charles Darwin, classifies as 
"mental activity" every act of the sensile memory, of the 
sensile imagination, and every manifestation of the sensi- 
tive affections. Thus it comes to pass that popular 
psychology speaks of an "animal mind" in the same way 
as of the "human mind." It forgets that mind ex- 
clusively signifies a principle of mental life, a principle 
of intelligence and of liberty. Let us restore their 
original meaning to these terms. It has been corrupted 
by the pseudo-psychology of our days. 

How even zoologists who are skilful observers, but 
unable to keep free from the pernicious influence of 
popular psychology, have been liable to fatal errors of 
judgment in their psychological deductions, is aptly illus- 
trated by the following example taken from Haacke's 
"Creation of Man and His Ideals" (German, Yena, 
1895.) In order to prove that pursuits and struggles 
for "ideals of truth" and for knowledge of general truths 
were to be found even in the animal kingdom, Haacke 
relates the following interesting observation (p. 388) : 

"The Makis, a kind of animal belonging to the 
Prosimia, are very fond of having tobacco-smoke blown 
on to their faces. The effect of the smoke upon their 
olfactory organs apparently calls forth an agreeable itch- 
ing of the skin ; for, as soon as it is blown towards their 



What is Intelligence, and IV hat is Instinct? 41 

nostrils, they begin to scratch themselves all over the 
body. Their enjoyment of the smoke is apparent, for 
they do not try to avoid it, but on the contrary direct 
their nostrils towards the person who emits the smoke 
of his cigar. When they are thus once accustomed to 
enjoy the pleasure of tobacco at regular intervals, it is 
not necessary to approach them with a burning cigar or 
pipe, but the pretence of blowing at them is sufficient to 
make them stretch forth their faces. And, finally, the 
mere act of blowing at them is enough to make them 
scratch themselves. Consequently, they drew the con- 
clusion from the experience of the past, that anybody 
who pretends to blow smoke from his mouth, does so 
in reality. Of course, this was a wrong generalization, 
but such mistakes are well known to happen even to 
human beings. It is enough that so lowly organized 
brutes as Prosimia can make generalizations/' 

From these observations Haacke wishes in full earn- 
est to prove that "mental processes of generalization" 
are to be met with in animal life. Yet, scientific animal 
psychology is unable to accept such phenomena as a 
proof of mental generalizations. They are nothing 
more than combinations of a sensitive imagination. 
They are totally different from mental powers of ab- 
straction, and even furnish a conclusive proof of the 
utter impotence of animals to make "mental generaliza- 
tions" at all. By mistaking combinations of sensitive 
representations (sense images) for general concepts, 
and by erroneously identifying the two, Haacke himself 
made a wrong generalization; an occurrence which is 
indeed not very uncommon to modern animal psycholo- 
gists. Let us, accordingly, submit the psychic processes 



/ 



42 Chapter. III.-. 

which Haacke observed in the Makis, and classifies as 
mental generalizations, to a critical analysis. 

On account of the pleasant irritation of the nerves 
produced by the tobacco-smoke ivJiich *Mr.* Haacke re- 
peatedly blew at them, the Makis regularly felt the 
necessity of scratching themselves. The constant con- 
nection of the olfactory perception of the smoke with a 
feeling of itching and the consequent impulse to scratch 
themselves, was apparently due to instinct, to the in- 
herited disposition of their sensitive cognition and ap- 
petite. But the olfactory perception of the smoke was 
not less regularly preceded by the sight perception of 
some one approaching and emitting smoke towards their 
nostrils, and by the subsequent perception of the sense 
of feeling. In consequence of its frequent repetition 
this double impression of the sight and of feeling be- 
came so intimately connected with the subsequent pro- 
cesses that all of them finally formed one constant 
process of association, which spontaneously led from the 
first link in the chain of psychic activity to the last, even 
when several intermediate links were missing. The 
interior sensile imagination supplied the missing links 
which were originally an experience of the outer senses, 
and replaced these exterior perceptions by images of the 
sensitive memory. This is the only natural explanation 
of the fact that the Makis at last stretched forth their 
heads and prepared for the subsequent operation of 
scratching, when persons only pretended to blow at 
them, and that they were induced to scratch themselves 
merely by a perception of feeling, even without the 
olfactory perception of the smoke. 

This whole psychic process consists solely of sense 



What is Intelligence, and What is Instinct? 43 

perceptions, feelings, sense images, of images of the sen- 
sile memory and of acts of the sensile appetite, and evi- 
dently belongs to the sphere of sensitive instinct. Such in- 
stinctive activities of animals are due to complex sense 
representations and are, as they always were, called in 
scholastic philosophy "expectatio casniim similium!* 
It would hardly have befallen a savant of antiquity or 
of the Middle Ages to ascribe such psychic processes 
in animals to a power of mental abstraction. This feat 
was reserved to modern animal psychology which looks 
down with contempt upon the "old school philosophy," 
and imagines it can do better without it. Well, Haacke's 
'mentally generalizing" Makis prove what absurd 
achievements are the result. Through an erroneous and 
arbitrary method of interpretation he first endowed his 
Makis with a mental power of abstraction, then he dis- 
solved their whole process of sensitive association into a 
series of logical conclusions and finally maintained that 
it was the animal which had thus concluded, whilst ap- 
parently it was Mr. Haacke himself. 

Had the good Makis been able to "think" at all, 
they would have been clever enough to scratch them- 
selves only when a person approached with a burning 
pipe or cigar and then blew the smoke at them. The 
intelligent Makis could not have failed to perceive the 
relation between cause and effect, and ought to have 
made the following conclusion : Tobacco-smoke is never 
in evidence, unless a burning pipe or cigar is in sight; 
now it is only tobacco-smoke that produces such a pleas- 
ant sensation of tickling upon our epidermis ; therefore 
we shall not scratch ourselves when Mr. Haacke ap- 
proaches without a pipe or cigar, and only blows air on 



44 Chapter III. 

to our faces. Thus the very facts, from which a super- 
ficial observer infers a mental power of abstraction in 
animals, not only turn out to be pseudo-arguments in 
favor of animal intelligence, but can be turned into 
effective arguments against it. 

In the same manner as Haacke's "mentally general- 
izing" Makis, numerous other instances which have 
been advanced by modern animal psychologists such as 
Darwin, Brehm, Perty, Romanes, and are supposed to 
furnish convincing evidence of the existence of intelli- 
gence and spiritual faculties in animals, could be sub- 
jected to a critical analysis. We would constantly meet 
with the same result: If combinations of sense repre- 
sentations are deliberately taken for "mental generaliza- 
tions," then, of course, it is very easy to talk of the 
"intelligence" and "spiritual faculties" of animals. But 
these terms are empty words. Any reasoning naturalist 
will readily concede that we have not built our com- 
parative psychological discussion upon the phrases of 
pseudo-psychology, but upon an unprejudiced analysis 
of the relative psychological concepts. And upon this 
foundation we shall now have to examine : Do animals 
possess intelligence as well as instinct? Do they pos- 
sess beyond and above their sensitive, also spiritual fac- 
ulties ? 



CHAPTER IV. 

EXAMINATION OF SOME OBJECTIONS. 

PARTISANS of modern animal psychology will 
perhaps raise a "vehement opposition" to our dis- 
tinction of instinct and intelligence. This has previ- 
ously been done by some critics of our former pub- 
lications." 1 However, a vehement opposition makes 
impression only by the weight of its arguments. And 
this is but just and fair, for objections do not deserve 
consideration further than they are supported by solid 
reasons. These objections are prompted not so much 
by logical difficulties as by a certain indefinite feeling 
which has gradually developed under the influence of 
popular psychology and become nowadays the fashion- 
able standard of criticism. A clear analysis of psycho- 
logical concepts is avoided, because the possible con- 
sequences are dreaded. Apprehension evidently exists 
that the close approximation of man and animal, both of 
whom are generally regarded as essentially of the same 
nature, might appear to be an illusion ; and, perhaps, it is 
anticipated that between man and brute a wide and mo- 
mentous gulf might be revealed which demands of man a 
far higher degree of morality than is taught in "Brehnr s 
Thierleben." For this reason some desire to banish all 
critically tenable distinctions between instinct and in- 



1 ) For instance in the "Naturwissenschaftlichen Rundschau," 7 
(1892), No. 12, in the review of our book, "Die zusammengesetzten 
Nester und gemischten Kolonien der Ameisen." 

45 



46 Chapter IV. 

telligence from the territory of animal psychology and 
do away with them as so many "artificial barriers." 
But they forget that in calling only those abilities of 
animals "instinctive" which are transmissible as such, 
and designating as "intelligent" those which have been 
acquired or perfected by sense experience, modern ani- 
mal psychology erects a new barrier between instinct 
and intelligence. This is a purely artificial barrier, and 
we had to reject it. It was erected upon false psycho- 
logical foundations. But our distinction between in- 
stinct and intelligence rests on firmer ground. It is 
natural, not artificial, because it really coincides with the 
barrier that actually exists between the two psychic 
faculties of man and animal An "opposition" that is 
merely "vehement" in clamor, but not in argument, can 
effect nothing against it. 

Nor does the statement refute us, that according to 
our theory animals are exclusively guided by a "blind 
instinct." In the preceding chapter we have set forth 
what we understand and must understand by instinct, 
when we penetrate deeper into the essence and nature of 
instinctive processes. Instinct is the hereditary adaptive 
disposition of the power of sensile cognition and ap- 
petite in the animal. It is blind only in as far as 
instinctive actions are not governed by rational delibera- 
tion ; it is not blind in as far as those actions are deter- 
mined and influenced by the exterior and interior sense 
perceptions of the animal. Those who try to impugn 
our the-ory of instinct by attacking a "blind instinct" 
fight against windmills. 

But, so they say, since the epoch-making work of 



Examination of Some Objections. 47 

Herm. Reimarus 1 , it has become a settled truth that 
animals possess intelligence as well as instinct. Let us 
examine this dazzling objection. 

In the first edition of his "Lectures on Human and 
Animal Psychology" (Leipzig, 1863, Lecture 29, P. 
490 2 ), William Wundt writes literally as follows: "The 
founder of modern animal psychology is H. S. Rei- 
marus. We owe to him the establishment of the mod- 
ern concept of "instinct." In his opinion, all actions 
of the animal are essentially determined; he ascribes to 
animals feelings, obscure representations, memory and 
imagination, but denies them intelligence and reason. 
This view of the psychic life of animals has, in the main, 
been dominating till now, and has especially gained 
ground in the minds of common people, although a 
great number of writers were against Reimarus' opin- 
ions. In their study of the psychic life of animals they 
started from the principle : explain as much as possible 
from analog}- to the psychic life of man." In the second 
edition, which was issued in 1892, this whole passage 
is missing; and for good reasons. Wundt had learned 
meanwhile that Reimarus was not the originator, but, 
on the contrary, a decided opponent of the so-called 



x ) "Allegemeine Betrachtungen ueber die Triebe der Thiere, haupt- 
saechlich ueber ihre Kunsttriebe," 3. Ausg., Hamburg, 1773. Since the 
issue of the first edition of this work a detailed essay on the "Animal 
Psychology" of Reimarus has been published by Dr. Ch. Chr. Scherer 
("Das Thier in der Philosophic des H. S. Reimarus," Wuerzburg, 1898. 
See likewise "Stimmen aus Maria-Lc.ach," 56, 1899, 91 ff.). It entirely 
agrees with our views on the relation of the Hamburg Philosopher to 
modern Animal Psychology. 

2 ) The second edition of the German has been translated into 
English by J. E. Crighton and E. B. Titchener, New York; MacMillan 
& Co. (London: Swan Sonnenschein & Co.), 1896. 



48 Chapter IV. 

modern animal psychology. It is by no means the cor- 
rect and critical opinion of Reimarus on the difference 
between instinct and intelligence, and on the want of 
reason in animals, that has "gained ground in the minds 
of common people," nor has his opinion become "domi- 
nating" in modern animal psychology; but the very 
contrary has taken place. The very writers alluded to 
by Wundt towards the end of the above passage, those 
I say who arbitrarily humanized the animal 1 and ac- 
credited it with intelligence and reason, are the true 
originators of modern animal psychology, which Wundt 
himself formerly professed, while he now condemns it 
without mercy as the "psychology of the crowd." 

As Wundt has candidly acknowledged the error of 
his former opinion on the relation of Reimarus to mod- 
ern animal psychology, it may be hoped that those who 
on his authority still declare Reimarus to have been 
"its originator," will arrive at a truer conviction, and 
will likewise acknowledge their mistake. 

Another prominent representative of modern animal 
psychology, Maximilian Perty, 2 expresses himself as 
follows on the work of Reimarus : 

"An as yet unsurpassed writer on the psychic life 
of animals is the elder Reimarus, who has the merit of 
having clearly understood the difference between in- 
stinct and intelligence. He regards as impulse (Trieb) 
'any natural efforts that tend to the performance of 



*) To these belonged at the time of Reimarus, besides Condillac 
and Leroy, especially Erasmus Darwin, the grandfather of Charles 
Darwin. See the I. Vol. of his "Zoonomia." Cf. also Kirby and Spence, 
Introduct. to Entomology 2 (5th edition), 463 ff. 

2 ) "Ueber das Seelenleben der Thiere" (2, Aufl.), p. 8 ff. 



Examination of Some Objections. 49 

certain actions/ and he distinguishes mechanical, 1 im- 
aginative and spontaneous impulses. Imaginative im- 
pulses extend partly to present, partly to past facts; 
spontaneous impulses spring one and all from pleasure 
or displeasure, and they are either natural, or derivative 
impulses. He subdivides natural, spontaneous impulses 
into the general impulse of self-love, and into particular 
impulses, the latter of which are partly emotional, partly 
artificial impulses. . . . According to Reimarus the 
powers of soul and body in animals are more accurately 
defined as regards their objects as well as the nature of 
their agency, than they are in man. There is nothing 
in the outward behavior of animals that indicates more 
than indistinct and obscure apprehension, or forces us 
to accredit them with proper concepts, judgments and 
deductions; there is much, however, that manifests the 
very contrary; animals, therefore, do not think." 

Even Perty, who, as a modern psychologist, enter- 
tains the conviction that animals do "think," is forced 
to confess that Reimarus has nothing to do with that 
modern animal psychology according to which animals 
possess an intelligence which is essentially identical with 
human reason, and differs only in degree. For 
Reimarus was not so superficial as to regard all actions 
of the animal which were due to sense experience as 
intelligent. Whoever claims Reimarus for this school 
of psychology has evidently not read his works at all, 



l ) The "mechanical impulses" of Reimarus respond to what we call 
reflex-mechanisms. The "imaginative impulses" comprise the acts of 
sensile cognition. The "spontaneous impulses" are the instinctive im- 
pulses which spring from the sensile appetite and which he understands 
in the same way as we do. 



50 Chapter IV. 

and especially not the twenty-seventh and the follow- 
ing paragraphs of chapter the second, nor paragraphs 
116, 119, 122, 123 of chapter the ninth. In these 
chapters Reimarus shows that there is not only a differ- 
ence in degree, but also in essence between sensitive 
cognition and intelligence, and that animals are en- 
dowed with instinct, but not with intellect. We earn- 
estly recommend the study of these chapters to all those 
modern animal psychologists who acknowledge the 
w r ork of Reimarus to be an achievement as yet unsur- 
passed in the line of animal psychology. 

Reimarus was not the first to understand and deduce 
the difference between instinct and intelligence. On 
carefully studying his "Allgemeine Betrachtungen 
ueber die Triebe der Thiere," and on comparing his 
opinions with Aristotelian views of animal psychology, 
as they are contained in the Summa Theologica and 
other works of St. Thomas Aquinas which bear on the 
psychic life of animals, the conviction is forced upon 
us that Reimarus plainly developed to their last conse- 
quences the views of Aristotle and of mediaeval scho- 
lasticism on animal psychology. With Thomas of 
Aquin Reimarus 1 ascribes to animals, at least to the 
higher genera, 2 besides the outer senses, an inner 
sense, a sensile memory and the sensile powers of 
imagination and estimation, with the sole difference that 
Reimarus formulates the latter powers somewhat dif- 
ferently, and refuses to recognize the sensile memory 
of animals as a memory in the proper sense of the 



*) S. Thorn., "Summ. theol., 1, q. 78, a. 4; 1, 2, q. 4, a. 2 ad 2, 
and in different other places — Reimarus Nos. 11-18. 
2 ) See in lib. 12 Metaph. I. 1, lect. 1. 



Examination of Some Objections. 51 

word. 1 Furthermore, as Thomas of Aquin ascribes 
to animals sensuous affections (passiones) which are 
similar to those of man, so does Reimarus. 2 With 
Thomas of Aquin he 3 lays particular stress on the 
hereditary, artificial abilities of animals, for the sake 
of explaining their psychic life, and 4 attributes to 
animals only sensile cognition and sensile appetite, but 
denies intelligence and free-will. Both of them 5 in- 
sist, on the other hand, upon a certain analogy which 
exists in many instances between the instinctive life of 
animals and the intelligent and free activity of man 
(participatio aliqua rationis, libertatis). With Thomas 
of Aquin Reimarus 6 describes instinctive impulses as 
definite natural aptitudes (determinationes naturae), 



l ) Cf. Reimarus Nos. 14, 17, 18, 178. The reason is, because R. 
believes that memory essentially includes a power of reminiscence 
which recognizes the past as past; a power which naturally presupposes 
a comparison of representations' and a judgment on their reciprocal rela- 
tions. Yet, he distinctly declares (No. 178), his readiness to ascribe to 
animals a memoria sensiiiva, if it is understood as a mere reproduction 
of antecedent representations' and their combination with present appre- 
hensions. But Aristotle and Thomas of Aquin had long ago drawn a 
clear distinction between memoria and reminiscentia, and attributed 
only the former, but denied the latter to animals. Therefore the 
opinion of Reimarus in reality coincides with their view. 

*) S. Thos., "Summ. theol.," 1, 2, q. 31, a. 3 and a. 6; q. 35, a. 6; 
q. 40, a. 3; q. 41, a. 1 ad 3; q. 46, a. 4; 3, dist. 26. q. 1, a. 1.— Reimarus, 
Nos. 43, 44. 

3 ) S. Thorn., "Summ. theol.," 1, 2, q. 13, a. 2 ad 3.— Reimarus, 
Nos. 85-143. 

4 ) S. Thorn., q. 24 "De verit," a. 2;— Reim. 27-31; 119-123. 

5 ) S. Thorn., q. 24 and 25, "De verit," a. 2; 3, dist. 27, q. 1, a. 2; 
"Summ. theol.," 1, 2, q. 24, a. 4 ad 3; in lib. 12 Metaph. I. 1, lect. 1 
(prudentia de regim. pricip. I. 1, c. 1 (naturalis industria). — Reimarus, 
No. 26 and other places. 

6 ) S. Thorn., 2, dist. 25, q. 1, a. 1 ad 7; q. 18 De verit., a. 7 ad 7. 
— Reimarus, Nos. 140-143. 



52 Chapter IV. 

and 1 acknowledges and maintains the existence of 
final causes in the workings of nature. And finally 
he agrees with Thomas of Aquin 2 in tracing back the 
suitable instinctive dispositions of animals to the power 
and wisdom of a personal Creator who deposited them 
in the nature of the animal. In discussing these ques^ 
tions of animal psychology Reimarus naturally enters 
far more into particulars, because he treats this subject 
in a special work, whereas Thomas of Aquin could only 
touch them incidentally in other productions of his 
eminently speculative genius. 

In his "Allgemeine Betrachtungen ueber die Triebe 
der Thiere," a book highly appreciated by modern 
animal psychologists, Reimarus has logically evolved 
the animal psychology of Mediaeval Scholasticism. 
Indeed, we may unhesitatingly assert that Reimarus 
attained such excellent results in animal psychology, 
because he followed out the scientific psychology of 
Aristotelian philosophy. The philosophy of Decartes 
which swerved from that of Aristotle, made a mere 
machine of the animal. Modern animal psychology, 
on the other hand, went to the opposite extreme by 
arbitrarily humanizing the brute. Scornfully despising 
the "old school systems of the scholastics/' and trying 
to tread its own unbeaten path, it has gone astray, so 
much so, that it is obliged to seek aid from the un- 
scientific notions of "popular psychology" and to fight 
shy of any and every analysis of psychological concepts. 

Moreover these remarks will serve as a refutation 

1 ) S. Thorn., "Sumra. theol.," 1, 2, q. 1, a. 2. — Reimarus, Nos. 
150, 151. 

2 ) S. Thorn., 1, 2, q. 46, a. 4 ad 2; q. 13, a. 2 ad 3, etc.— Reimarus 
No. 1. 



Examination of Some Objections. 53 

of another objection 1 which has been advanced against 
our psychological views of animal life, namely that "the 
antiquated views of scholastic philosophy" did not keep 
pace with the advance of modern biology. We need 
not enter upon this difficulty. It has been brushed 
aside. True, our age is far superior to the middle 
ages in the observation of nature and in detail of science. 
A man like Thomas of Aquin would be the first to 
candidly acknowledge and duly appreciate the results 
cf modern observation. Yet, on the other hand, it must 
be granted that modern science can still learn from the 
great thinkers of antiquity and of the middle ages in 
the line of philosophical explanations of animal life. 

We now come to a series of objections which an- 
other critic, Dr. Aug. Forel, Professor at the University 
cf Zuerich, has raised against our psychological views 
of animal life. 2 Forel is Professor of Psychiatry, and 
a prominent expert in questions of ant life and of the 
human brain. He belongs to the school which regards 
psychology as a mere question of nerve physiology, 
because it acknowledges no other realities than the 
functions of brain-cells. According to Ford's "mon- 
istic" views, the whole world is the product of the 
nerve activity of our brain, below which lies an "im- 



*) Cf. Karl Mueller, in the periodical "Xatur," 25th Oct., 1884 (p. 
512 ff.), in the discussion of our book, "Der Trichterwickler," (Rhyn- 
chites betulae), eine wissenschaftliche Studie ueber den Thierinstinct. 

2 ) In a lecture on "Brain and Soul," in the 66th Meeting of 
Naturalists at Vienna, 26th Sept., 1894 (p. 28 ff.). See also our reply 
in "Biologisches Centralblatt," 15 (1895), 644. Forel has recently de- 
veloped his views on Comparative Psychology in a work published in 
"L'Annee psychologique," 1896: "Un apercu de Psychologie comparee." 
But as they are essentially the same as those contained in the above 
quoted lecture, we need not enter upon his later publication. 



54 Chapter IV. 

penetrable metaphysical substratum/' the only "thing 
as such." Therefore, in his opinion, "the everlasting 
dualistic strife between materialists and spiritualists is 
absolutely without object." "Everything is soul, just 
as everything is force and matter. Not one of these 
inseparable notions is more fundamental, or higher than 
the rest, because they are identical." 1 

If all notions are really identical, then, indeed, there 
is no possibility of critical distinction between them. 
If we and the whole outer world are only a product 
of the nerve activity of our brain cells, the reality of 
which we can no longer account for, we have arrived 
at absolute skepticism, a point at which all scientific 
controversy has an end. Thus, while this "monistic 
consideration of the world" affords undoubtedly the 
best protection to modern psychology, because it serves 
as a safeguard from any attack that is based upon a 
critical analysis of notions, it necessarily involves its 
own destruction, because it abandons, at least from a 
logical point of view, all objectively scientific knowledge 
of the phenomena of nature. 

After these preliminary remarks let us enter upon 
Forel's defence of animal intelligence. He attaches 
great importance to the circumstance that not only 
"automatisms of instincts," but what he calls "plastic 
neurozymic activities" are a factor in animal life. Forel 
avows that the human soul is more plastic than the 
animal soul, but he also maintains that the latter is not 
without "plasticity." The souls of the higher monkeys 
are extremely plastic, capable of development and train- 
ing, and endowed with few instincts. Very plastic are 

l ) See e. g., p. 27 and 28. 



Examination of Some Objections. 55 

also the souls of elephants, dogs, seals, and dolphins. 
And even in lower animals, whether they be endowed 
with specially complicated instincts or not, a slight 
degree of plasticity can be recognized on closer inspec- 
tion. Lubbock tamed a wasp, and I succeeded in tam- 
ing a Dytiscus. Even in ant life I have identified sev- 
eral cases of plastic neurozymic action. Still, the dif- 
ference between the plasticity of the soul in an insect 
and an Orang-Utang is immensely wider than that 
which intervenes between the soul of an Orang-Utang 
and that of man, especially of individuals of an inferior 
race. No one can deny this whose vision is not ob- 
scured by prejudice." 

"In Natur und Offenbarung (1891) my worthy 
friend and opponent in metaphysical questions, the 
Jesuit Professor Eric Wasmann tries to oppose these 
views in his Psychology of Mixed Ant Societies. 1 
Yet his sagacious ingenuity failed him for once. It is 
certainly an easy task to ridicule the superficial anthro- 
pomorphic interpretations of the animal soul given by 
such men as Brehm, Buechner and others, and to refute 
them victoriously. But, in order to deny ant intelli- 
gence, Wasmann attributes to these insects ratiocinations 
similar to the human, which, of course, are far beyond 
them." 

What Forel, as a nerve physiologist, calls by the 
new name of "plastic neurozymic activities," exactly 
coincides with what scientific psychology knew long 
ago as the perfecting of innate instincts by the sense 



l ) This is the title of the second-last chapter of our book: "Die 
zusammengesetzten Nester und gemischten Kolonien der Ameisen," 
Muenster, 1891. 



56 Chapter IV. 

experience of the individual. It is, therefore, identical 
with the erroneously called "intelligence" of modern 
psychology. Such plastic neurozymic activities un- 
doubtedly underlie all intelligent actions, but they occur 
also in innumerable activities of instinctive sentiency. 
Not a single act of the sensile memory is conceivable 
without "plastic neurozymic activity." Therefore the 
substitution of the novel term "plastic neurozymic ac- 
tivity" is no proof whatsoever for animal intelligence. 
Moreover the point at issue in our discussion of the 
difference between instinct and intelligence is by no 
means the question, whether higher animals are able 
to perfect their innate instincts by individual sense 
experience in a greater degree than lower animals — a 
fact which we never disputed — but, whether every suit- 
able action of the animal that is due to sense experience 
must be accepted as an intelligent action, or not. This 
is the question which must be answered. Forel, how- 
ever, evades the solution by stating that only prejudice 
and blindness could deny the numerous plastic neuro- 
zymic activities of higher animals. We cannot accept 
this statement as a final answer, but must in turn, 
demand of our learned friend Professor Forel a closer 
consideration of the analysis of psychological concepts. 
But what about the objection that we attribute to 
ants "ratiocinations similar to the human," which are, 
of course, far beyond them? The answer flows spon- 
taneously from our previous psychological analysis. 
Forel 1 belongs to that class of moderate modern ani- 
mal psychologists who, on the one hand, join us in pro- 



l ) Beside the previous quotation see also his little essay, "Ameise 
und Menscb, oder Automatismus und Vernunft." Zuerich, 1889. 



Examination of Some Objections. 57 

testing against the humanization of the animal and still 
humanize it themselves by allotting to it a power of 
formal reasoning different indeed from human reason 
in degree, but not in kind. Now we have proved in 
detail (in Chapters 2 and 3), that any and every power 
of formal reasoning necessarily implies ratiocinations 
similar to the human/' Therefore, the avowal that 
animals are unable to make ratiocinations similar to the 
human is equivalent to the statement that they do not 
possess a power of formal reasoning — that they have no 
intelligence. Hence we must persist in our demand: 
give the terms their proper meaning, and do not trifle 
with the term "intelligence" by substituting at random 
contrary significations. Such a procedure renders all 
scientific animal psychology impossible, and paves the 
way for an indiscriminate humanization of the brute. 

A passage of another work of Prof. Forel on the 
sense perceptions of insects, a work valuable, indeed, 
for psychology and biology alike, 1 proves the truth 
of this assertion. From the fact that ants and other 
insects are able to connect different sense perceptions 
in a suitable manner and not unfrequently make use of 
former sense experiences on subsequent occasions — a 
fact for which we shall furnish copious evidence from 
personal observation in our "Vergleichende Studien 
ueber das Seelenleben der Ameisen." 2 Forel draws 
the following conclusion : "Done les insectes raiso nnent, 
et les plus intelligents d'entre eux, les hymenopteres 
sociaux, surtout les guepes et les fourmis, raisonnent 



1 ) "Experiences et remarques critiques sur les sensations des in- 
sectes." 2d part (Recueil Zool. Suisse, 31 Mars, 1887), p. 237. 

2 ) An English translation of which will soon follow. 



58 Chapter IV. 

meme beaucoup plus qu'on n'est tente de croire, quand 
on observe le mecanisme regulierement reproduit de 
leurs instincts." Now this fact which induces Prof. 
Forel to state that these insects "reason," implies 
nothing beyond the association of sense representations, 
which follows the hereditary laws of instinctive sen- 
tiency. Forel does not prove that ants really make 
formal conclusions whilst these associations of repre- 
sentations are going on. But it was precisely this that 
he had to prove. For the so-called material conclusions, 
or such processes of cognition as zve can resolve into 
formal syllogisms, occur even in those activities of ani- 
mals that are directly due to the hereditary disposition 
of animal instinct. Nor does Prof. Forel deny that 
they are merely instinctive. 

Consequently, in stating that "les insectes raison- 
nent," Forel either ascribes to animals "ratiocinations 
similar to the human," or he uses the term "raisonner" 
in a wrong sense. Moreover it is untenable to con- 
struct, as Forel does both here and elsewhere, an 
artificial contrast between the "mechanism" or the 
"automatism" of instinct and the manifestations of this 
mechanism which have been brought about by "plastic 
neurozymic activities" or, in other words, by the sense 
experience of the animal. They belong to one and the 
same range of sensile perception. There is no real 
contrast between them, but only between instinct and 
intelligence in the proper sense of the word. Nor can 
the anatomy of the brain ever demonstrate the true 
nature of intelligence; it can be gathered only from a 
clear analysis of psychological concepts. 

Our worthy friend, Prof. Forel, continues in his 



Examination of Seme Objections. 59 

criticism: 1 "It is, furthermore, asserted (by Was- 
mann) that cultural development is a condition of 
intelligence. Now, the rate of cultural development 
in man is rapidly progressive in the higher races, whilst 
it is enormously slow in the lower. Higher animals 
can be tamed and are docile. This fact indicates a 
germ of capability of cultural development. Higher 
mammals most decidedly profit by past experiences, 
and even utilize them to some extent in teaching their 
young. The gulf between this stage and the lowest 
germs of cultural development in man is not so very 
wide. Yet, in order to throw more light on this ques- 
tion, one should not, as Wasmann did, compare ants 
immediately with man, but carefully follow up the 
scale of animal life and proportion one's demands on 
the capacities of the animal soul to the development 
of its brain. Besides, an intimate dealing with animals 
soon leads to the recognition of definite individual char- 
acters amongst them, 2 such as those which Delboeuf 
observed among his tame lizards and described so 
eloquently. He pointed them out to me, so that I am 
convinced of the fact. Embryos, so to say, of talent, 
geniuses, heroes of will-power as of the contrary are 
found among individuals of one and the same species. 
Who is not acquainted with aristocratic and proletarian 
dogs and horses? Of course, here as elsewhere, one 



1 ) "Gehirn und Seek," p. 28. 

2 ) "I was often able to observe indications of individual differ- 
ences of character even among ants of the same colony; some were 
more irritable, others more active, others more thievish; there were 
more cowardly and more bold, more vivacious and more phlegmatic 
individuals. I have likewise noted changes in behavior which were due 
to past experience and repeated observations." 



60 Chapter IV. 

must be careful to avoid anthropomorphic exaggera- 
tions/' 

In order to do justice to this mountain of objections, 
let us examine them carefully one by one. 

First of all, the cultural development of man and 
the taming of higher animals are said to be different 
in degree and not in kind. Now, we have nowhere 
stated, as Forel implies, that cultural development is a 
condition of intelligence; on the contrary, we have 
always maintained that intelligence was a necessary 
condition for cultural development, and that the latter 
was a necessary result, and consequently a good cri- 
terion of intelligence. We willingly admit that the 
rate of cultural development is different with different 
nations and races ; but we do not admit that the docility 
of animals represents even a lower degree or a "germ" 
of the cultural development of man. The one is essen- 
tially different from the other, and docility can never 
become cultural development. This is evident from 
the following considerations. It is easier to tame and 
train higher than lower animals because their powers 
of outer and inner sense perception, their sense organs 
and their brains are relatively more similar to the 
human. Owing to this similarity, human intelligence 
trains the animal by combinations of certain signs to 
perform a specified feat. The trainer imprints, so to 
say, mechanically his own processes of thought into the 
sensile memory of the animal. But the latter never 
learns to think, it never learns of itself and apart from 
outer help to compare given representations one with 
the other, or to draw new conclusions from their 
reciprocal relations. Whoever has devoted his time to 



Examination of Some Objections. 61 

the training of animals, will be ^able to endorse this 
assertion. This fact which is so important for a critical 
estimate of the psychic life of higher animals, was 
perhaps illustrated in the most interesting manner by 
the lessons given by Lubbock 1 to his clever poodle 
Van. Even some lower animals can be tamed to a 
certain degree, although it is far more difficult for our 
intelligence to gain a directing influence upon their 
sense representations, because they differ from us so 
widely in size, in their sense organs and in their nervous 
system. Nevertheless, a hornet was tamed by P. W. 
Mueller, and I succeeded in taming an ant of the wild 
and warlike species Formica rufibarbis. Further in- 
formation on this experiment is to be had in my "Ver- 
gleichende Studien ueber das Seelenleben der Ameisen 
und der hoeheren Thiere." 2 

While, therefore, the taming of animals is due to 
the intelligence of man, who impresses the respective 
combinations of representations upon and into the sen- 
sitive knowledge of the animal, the cultural development 
even of the lowest races, always commences with the 
individual understanding of the people, that undergoes 
the process of mental development. The instruction 
which it receives from higher cultivated men, only 
serves, as it were, as a stimulating force. Prof. Forel 
happened to overlook this essential difference between 
the docility of animals and the cultural development of 
man. Otherwise he could never have asserted that the 



1 ) Lubbock, "On the Senses, Instincts and Intelligence of An- 
imals" (London, 1889), Chapt. 14. 

2 ) See also "Die psychischen Faehigkeiten der Ameisen" (Zoologica, 
Heft 26, Stuttgart, 1899), p. 82 ff. 



62 Chapter IV. 

docility of higher animals betrayed the "germ" of cul- 
tural development. 

We willingly admit that higher animals accumulate 
experience which they subsequently utilize. Indeed, 
not only the higher, but all animals are more or less 
able to gather and to profit by sensitive experience, 
because they all possess a more or less perfect sensile 
memory. But we have proven, that these applications 
of sensitive experience cannot be regarded as acts of 
"intelligence" 

It can also be maintained to some extent that higher 
animals "teach" their young. They perform certain 
actions in presence of their offspring, and thus unin- 
tentionally show them how to do the same ; whilst under 
the impulse of their instinct of imitation the young do 
what the parent animal did and thus they "learn." But 
Forel nowhere proves that in performing such suitable . 
actions the parent animal intended to instruct its off- v 
spring, as human parents do when they instruct their 
children. Indeed, the interpretation of the stimulus 
given to the imitative instincts of the young by the 
example of their parents as an act of instruction which 
is equivalent to teaching among hitman beings, is un- 
doubtedly an arbitrary humanization of the animal. 
But then Forel's assertion that "the gulf between this 
stage and the lowest germs of cultural development in 
man is not so very wide" is absolutely untenable. By 
the way, the pseudo-psychology of Brehm, Buechner, 
etc., which is so sharply condemned by Prof. Forel, has 
dealt with this so-called "instruction and teaching" 
among animals in such an arbitrary manner, and has 
been influenced in doing so by such hostile tendencies 



Examination of Some Objections. 63 

that careful scientists should trust such reports only 
with very great reserve. 1 

Furthermore, Forel does not find it appropriate on 
our part, to compare ants "immediately with man," in 
our critical examination of "ant-intelligence. " Yet, in 
our book on compound nests and mixed colonies of 
ants, the question was, whether the so-called intelli- 
gence of ants was or was not essentially of the same 
kind as that of man. Consequently it appears necessary 
to compare ants with man, and not with spiders, birds, 
or dogs. Moreover, we did not fail to add now and 
then in our critical discussion on ant-intelligence some 
remarks that are equally applicable to all animals; 
whilst in the present work, as well as in the "Compara- 
tive Studies" we have done so in still fuller measure. 

We also readily grant that animals, especially higher 
mammals, have as Forel remarks, "individual charac- 
teristics," and in our "Comparative Studies" we hope to 
record many convincing examples from our own ob- 
servation of the individual differences that appear in 
the characters of ants of various species, e. g., the raven- 
ous Red Ant (Formica sanguinea). But, pray, what 
proof do these examples furnish of "intelligence" and 
of "spiritual faculties" in animals? Why, even the 
innate dispositions of the powers of sensile perception 
and appetite have their individual differences and vari- 
ations which are 'essentially connected with the differ- 
ences of bodily organization; in other words, with "in- 
dividual variability." Moreover, these innate psychic 
differences are liable to increase to a remarkable extent, 



*) See Altum, "Der Vogel und sein Leben" (6. Aufl.), p. 208 ff. 



64 Chapter IV. 

owing to the various sense experiences of single indi- 
viduals. These two circumstances unquestionably af- 
ford a more scientific and simpler explanation of the 
so-called individual characters of dogs, horses, lizards, 
and ants, than is offered by ascribing differences of 
character to them similar to those which exist in human 
beings. However, Forel does not accept this shift, as 
he expressly declares. Anyhow, he can hardly avoid 
admitting that his appeal to "embryos of talents, of 
geniuses of will-power and their contrary/' in indi- 
viduals of several species of animals, has proved nothing 
against our views of the psychic faculties of animals. 

Another critic 1 expresses his satisfaction that we 
have restored to the term "instinct" its due rights and 
claims. Still, he thinks that at least a wee dose of true 
and genuine intelligence should be conceded to ants in 
order to facilitate the explanation of various facts. He 
attempts the following proof : 

"The manifold phenomena of ant life apparently 
furnish examples of some power of thought. A few 
years ago I observed in the Gruenewald, near Berlin, 
a colony of the large hill ant (Formica rufa) in full ac- 
tivity. The nest was situated on a path in the wood. 
The ants moved rapidly to and fro on a track trodden 
out by themselves. It led for several yards from the 
nest into the wood to a fir tree. Returning to their 
nests, the ants dragged all sorts of provisions — flies, 
small larvae, pieces of plants, etc. Suddenly I observed 
two ants returning from the wood and dragging a 



l ) In a discussion of our book: "Die zusammengesetzten Nester 
und gemischten Kolonien der Ameisen," in the "Naturwissenschaft- 
liche Rundschrift" (Berlin), 7, No. 25, vom 16 Juni, 1892. 



Examination of Some Objections. 65 

spider on one side of the track. They approached the 
nest to a distance of about half a yard, when they sud- 
denly changed the direction and moved away from the 
nest. This seemed to suit the wishes only of one ant, 
for the other tried in vain to pull the spider in the 
opposite direction. Finally they reached a consider- 
able distance from the colony when the second ant let 
go and made off, whilst the first continued to move 
farther away with her booty. This singular procedure 
aroused my suspicion, when lo! suddenly three ants 
came rushing to -the rescue, assailed their selfish 1 com- 
panion and tried to drag the dead spider in the direction 
of the nest. Thereupon the thievish ant redoubled her 
efforts and, for a moment, succeeded in offering effect- 
ive resistance. But at last the three police ants got the 
better of her. Having abandoned her prey, the thief 
remained alone and ran aimlessly to and fro, whereas 
the others were in high spirits on approaching the nest 
with their booty. Two of the three ants that were so 
concerned for the welfare of the community soon com- 
mitted the fat morsel to the care of the third, which 
dragged it to the nest, where it was speedily received 
by the crowd. They pulled the dead spider to one of 
the openings that led into the inner apartments of the 
large nest. What then followed, escaped the notice of 
the interested observer. 

"Now, if my interpretation be right, it follows that 
the ant which was suspected of fraudulent practises, 
wished, humanly speaking, to set aside some food for 
her own use without regard for the general interests of 



l ) Italics ours, 



66 Chapter IV. 

the colony and the common welfare ; it follows further, 
that her companion whose weakness prevented her from 
frustrating this selfish design, applied to the police, and 
that these officers of the law were soon on the spot, 
understood the state of affairs and thwarted the thief's 
plan. The companion which ran to the nest was prob- 
ably one of the three, and perhaps it was she who finally 
conveyed the prey to her kinsfolk, when the protection 
of the police ants seemed no longer necessary. Instinct 
alone does not offer a sufficient explanation of these 
facts, and that is why I have related them." 

Is it possible to take exception to this attractive 
proof of intelligence in ants ? Let us see, whether the 
case is exactly as it is represented by our critic in the 
"Naturwissenschaftliche Wochenschrift." 

According to his "interpretation," a member of the 
colony intended to set aside part of the prey for a pri- 
vate larder, because her daintiness surpassed her affec- 
tion for her companions. What would psychologically 
follow from this fact ? Nothing more than a proof that 
ants possess the power of sensile perception and appe- 
tite. In the present case, one sensile perception prevailed 
over another. But all further conclusions are unwar- 
ranted. What right, then, has our critic to imagine 
that the first ant was suspected of "fraudulent practises," 
was a "thief," and "humanly speaking," intended to 
accumulate a separate store for herself? These terms 
convey much more; they ascribe to ants a knowledge 
of "mine" and "thine," which is based upon delibera- 
tion; they insinuate a knowledge of "property" and 
of "duty." But, pray, where are the proofs for these 
gratuitous assertions? The truth is, that the observer 



Examination of Some Objections. 67 

has arbitrarily shifted his own moral concepts into the 
brain of the animal. 

It is precisely the same with the police ants whose 
aid is said to have been invoked against the "thief." 
When an ant draws the sensitive attention of her com- 
panions to herself by rapidly tapping them with her 
feelers, so that they follow her and take part in a 
certain undertaking, her mode of procedure cannot be 
compared to a human appeal for help, much less to a 
summons of the police. The whole interpretation is 1/ 
arbitrary and an obvious humanization of the brute. 

But apart from the above-mentioned anthropomor- 
phisms, the whole observation was misinterpreted by 
the observer. No expert in ant life will question this 
statement. For it is simply unheard of, and contradicts 
the observations of all ant-biologists, as Huber, Forel, 1/ 
Lubbock, Andre, McCook, Moggridge, Adlerz, Janet, 
etc., that any single ant should try to hide a part of her 
booty and deprive other members of the colony in order 
to gratify her own gluttony. If it be allowed to draw 
general conclusions from facts — and no naturalist will 
dispute such a legitimate deduction — we can boldly state, 
that any similar egotistic action on the part of an ant 
is a physical impossibility; it contradicts a law of 
nature. 

But the case is still more hopeless, because it hap- 
pened to be a hill ant (Formica rufa) which was 
branded as a "thief." This very species is distinguished 
for its social traits, and the single individual is absorbed 
in the community in a far higher degree than is the case 
with ants of any other species, even as a slave in strange 
colonies. In an observation nest of the ravenous Red 



68 Chapter IV. 

ant (Formica sanguinea), which I shall describe later 
on in detail, I kept Formica rufa together with three 
other Formica species as so-called slaves. Formica 
rufa, however, regularly distinguished herself from the 
other species by the eagerness with which she endeav- 
ored to carry into the interior of the nest any object 
that attracted her . attention, be it a particle of food 
or a guest (Lomechusa strumosa) which wished to be 
fondled. To impute a selfish theft to a hill ant is 
biological nonsense. 

What the critic actually did see is confined to the 
few facts, that one hill ant tried to drag a spider in 
a different direction to the beaten track and away from 
the main nest; that, finally, several other ants arrived 
from the colony and dragged the booty homeward. The 
observer ought to have carefully followed the "thievish" 
ant. Then he might have noticed that a party which 
originally belonged to the main colony, had founded a 
branch settlement nearby, to which the pretended "thief" 
belonged, and towards which she naturally tried to drag 
the spider. The larger nests of hill ants often have 
one or more sister nests, and whoever observes the pro- 
ceedings of ants can easily witness similar events at 
spots where the path from the main colony crosses the 
track to a sister nest. But to embellish an isolated, in- 
complete and misinterpreted observation into a romantic 
"detective story," which is finally brought to a crisis 
by the interference of the "police" is surely one of the 
most splendid exploits of modern animal psychology. 

However, we would wrong the gentleman by assert- 
ing that he told his attractive ant story in full earnest. 
It appeared to us from the very outset that he meant 



Examination of Some Objections. 69 

it as an ingenious satire on the stale and worn-out 
''arguments" for animal intelligence. He surely in- 
tended to show the readers of the Naturwissenschaft- 
liche Wochenschrift by an interesting example, how 
brilliant a proof of ant-intelligence can be fabricated 
from an observation which is easily explained by 
"simple instincts. " And as we know that the critic is 
an entomologist of name, we prefer this explanation as 
the most appropriate. 

In his otherwise well-meant criticism of the first 
edition of our two publications "Instinct and Intelli- 
gence in the Animal Kingdom" and "Comparative 
Studies of the Psychic Life of Ants and Higher Ani- 
mals/' Prof. H. E. Ziegler 1 made a statement which 
cannot be passed over in silence. In the first of these 
works, we examined his notion of "intelligence," and 
came to the result that what he called animal intelligence 
was nothing more than the exercise of hereditary in- 
stincts, governed and modified by individual sense 
experience. Furthermore, we dwelt in the second work 
on his attempted proof for the psychic development of 
our social customs from the gregarious habits of higher 
animals. Ziegler replies to our argumentation in these 
words : "I shall answer Wasmann neither here nor else- 
where, for his objections arise solely from his firm 
adherence to scholastic psychology. It is a principle 
with Wasmann to distinguish the actions of man from 
those of animals, because in his view the former are 
always conscious and free actions. But I hold, with 
many other naturalists, that it is impossible to discern 



l ) In "Zoologisches Centralblatt," 1897, No. 26. 



70 Chapter IV. 

how much consciousness or self-consciousness accom- 
panies the actions of animals, and that the so-called free 
v/ill of man is only the play of stronger and weaker 
motives. Therefore I admit the lawfulness of the sup- 
position that a gradual development has taken place 
from the soul of the animal into that of man." 

Now, it is not our intention to discuss tire famous 
question of the freedom of the human will, a question 
which is not solved by Mr. Ziegler's assertion that 
free will is "only the play of stronger and weaker mo- 
tives. " Nor do we take notice of his erroneous state- 
ment that, in our view, all activities of man are gov- 
erned by self-consciousness and free will. But we must 
necessarily test the two principal points of his reply. 
He states that our objections against modern animal 
psychology arise solely from our firm adherence to 
scholastic psychology; that no naturalist can tell how 
much self-consciousness accompanies the psychic ac- 
tions of animals; and that, consequently, an essential 
difference between human and animal faculties cannot 
be substantiated. 

That his first assertion is erroneous has been abun- 
dantly shown by Prof. W. Wundt, a scientist who is 
certainly not a partisan of scholastic psychology. Nev- 
ertheless, in the second edition of his "Lecture on the 
Human and the Animal Soul," he has arrived at the 
very same results as we did in regard to modern ani- 
mal psychology. He is of the opinion, that this modern 
definition of intelligence is due to a want of critical 
method in interpreting an association of sense repre- 
sentations for intelligence ; he affirms that no animals, 
the higher vertebrates not excepted, are endowed with 



Examination of Some Objections. 71 

genuine intelligence, the power of logical thought. 
Therefore scholastic psychology cannot be held respon- 
sible for these results. Our attitude towards modern 
animal psychology rests, on the contrary, on an un- 
prejudiced, critical examination of biological facts, 
which forces us to uphold an essential difference be- 
tween instinct and intelligence, between the psychic fac- 
ulties of man and animals. 

The second point of Ziegler's reply is, that no natu- 
ralist can tell how much self-consciousness accompanies 
the psyhic actions of animals, and that it is impossible 
to establish an essential difference between their psychic 
faculties and those of man. If naturalists had no other 
source of knowledge than what they see, feel, hear and 
smell, then this difficulty would be to the point. But 
this supposition annihilates any and every reasonable 
investigation of nature. Naturalists have not only 
sense faculties, but also an intellect, with which they 
must infer the causes of facts from their external ap- 
pearance. This principle is theoretically acknowledged 
and practically followed by all naturalists in all branches 
of science. Therefore, it must also hold goo3 for com- 
parative animal psychology. If animals do not mani- 
fest activities which demand the assumption of self- 
consciousness, we are not allowed to ascribe it to -them, 
because simpler causes explain the phenomena; and if 
the assumption of self-consciousness contradicts other 
activities, we must say that animals have none. Other- 
wise we would act uncritically and not as reasoning 
naturalists. But this is identical with the assertion of 
an essential difference between the psychic faculties of 
man and those of the animal. 



?2 Chapter IV. 

To those who disapprove of our distinction of in- 
stinct and intelligence may be added Prof. W. M. 
Wheeler of Texas University. He has developed his 
views in a recent paper on "The compound and mixed 
nests of American ants." 1 Admitting our psychological 
explanation of nearly all the facts observed in ant life, 
Prof. Wheeler maintains that he cannot adopt either 
our "psychological definitions" or our "psychogenetic 
reservations." 

Let us examine his reasons. Prof. Wheeler does 
not admit our distinction between instinct and intelli- 
gence, because he thinks that we take the term "in- 
stinct" in too wide a sense, by including under it 
"both the instinct and intelligence of other authors." 
Therefore he prefers to restrict the term intelligence to 
those actions of the animal "which imply choice on the 
part of the individual organism." 

We included, it is true, under "instinct sensu lato" 
not only those sensitive activities which are directly 
based on inherited mechanisms, but those also which are 
due to the sense experience of the animal. Still, we 
have never confounded the two. Otherwise we could 
not have restricted the term "instinctive sensu proprio" 
to sensitive activities which are based on inherited 
mechanisms. On the other hand we maintain that 
these two kinds of activities are not and cannot be 
essentially different, because all actions that are in- 
stinctive sensu proprio necessarily contain at least one 
element of sensile experience, the sensual agreeableness 
of the respective action (vide Chapt. 2). Therefore 
both kinds of activity belong to the same general class 

!) "American Naturalist," 35, 1900, No. 418, p. 808 ff. 



Examination of Some Objections. 73 

of instinctive actions sensu lato; and it is consequently 
erroneous to call the former "instinctive," the latter 
"intelligent." This is the mistake made by modern 
psychology. 

Only those actions are "intelligent" which contain 
a new and a higher psychic element, and this element 
is "choice." But, then, our definition of intelligence 
coincides with that of Prof. Wheeler. How are we to 
explain this seeming contradiction? "Choice" in the 
true sense of the wor4 not in the perverted meaning 
which "pseudo-psychology" has given to it, necessarily 
presupposes intelligence sensu stricto; for choice de- 
mands a selection which cannot be achieved without a 
faculty that is able to reflect, and all reflection essen- 
tially presupposes a power of abstraction. Therefore 
we are forced by the simplest laws of logic to conclude 
that no choice is possible without a power of abstraction. 

Consequently, Prof. Wheeler is mistaken in refus- 
ing to admit our definition of intelligence as "a power 
of abstraction or ratiocination." By calling "choice" 
the distinctive mark of intelligence, he has given our 
definition in another form. Therefore he, too, must 
exclude from the term "intelligent actions" all those ac- 
tivities which can be adequately explained by the laws 
of sensitive association without the aid of formal elec- 
tion or abstraction. 

Let us apply these conclusions to Prof. Wheeler's 
ideas on psychogenesis. He arrived, he says (p. 813), 
"at the same conclusion as Wasmann, that there are no 
evidences of ratiocination in ants." Hence we may 
say that Professor Wheeler has found no evidence of 
intelligence in ants. For intelligence supposes ratio- 



74 Chapter IV. 

cination. But Prof. Wheeler seems to be wrong when 
he adds: "This conclusion, however, even if it be ex- 
tended so as to exclude all animals except man from a 
participation of this faculty, does not imply the admis- 
sion of a qualitative difference between the human and 
animal psyche, as understood by Wasmann." For if 
we exclude the faculty of ratiocination from all animals 
except man, we necessarily exclude them from a par- 
ticipation of intelligence. Man is then the only intelli- 
gent being in opposition to all animals whose powers 
are merely of a sensitive nature. But this implies an 
essential difference between man and beast. Prof. 
Wheeler appeals in vain to the individual evolution of 
mental life in children, where the exercise of the sensi- 
tive precedes that of the intellectual faculty. For the 
human soul has different powers, those of the sensitive 
and those of the spiritual order, and the exercise of 
the latter presupposes the evolution of the former with- 
out changing their essential difference. "Show us the 
animal," we say to Prof. Wheeler, "which becomes or 
has become man in the same way as the human child 
develops its mental faculties, the spiritual after the 
sensitive, and we shall admit the correctness of your 
phylogenetic psychogenesis of man." 



CHAPTER V. 

GENERAL SENSE IMAGES AND THE POWER OF 
ABSTRACTION. 

SCIENTIFIC animal psychology differs from pseudo- 
psychology by its critical analysis of concepts, without 
which it cannot obtain true scientific results. The 
necessity thereof is acknowledged by prominent zoolo- 
gists. Still only a single critic, Dr. Charles Emery, 
Professor of Zoology at the University of Bologna, 1 
has been found among modern zoologists who deemed 
it worthy of attention. 

From the very outset Emery openly declares his 
conviction that animal intelligence exists. "I am con- 
vinced," he says, "that the mental activities of animals 
differ chiefly in two points from those of man: I. In 
the far inferior degree of animal intelligence ; and 2. in 
the want of speech, an essential instrument of the human 
power of abstraction." In spite of this preliminary 
remark, we never met with a more thorough and accur- 
ate criticism. We shall try to discuss it in the same 
thorough and careful manner. 

"The exaggerated descriptions of animal intelli- 
gence," continues Emery, "and the humanization of 
animals by Buechner and others, made it easy for 



l .) In an article: "Instinct und Intelligenz der Thiere. Bemerk- 
ungen zu E. Wasmann's neuestem Werke: 'Die zusammengesetzten 
Xester und Gemischten Kolonien der Ameisen.' " ("Biologisches Cen- 
tralblatt," 13, No. 4 und 5 [l.Maerz, 1893], S. 150 ff. See also my reply 
in the "Biologisches Centralblatt," 15, No. 17 (1. Sept., 1895), S. 642 ff. 

75 



76 Chapter V. 

Wasmann to deny animal intelligence; for the greater 
part of the so-called intelligent actions of animals can 
by no means claim that title. By the way, a similar 
remark had previously been made by Forel in speaking 
of ants. But, are there no facts which go to prove 
the intelligence of certain animals? The answer de- 
pends upon how we define instinct. It is Wasmann's 
merit to have opened the way to a more earnest dis- 
cussion of the question by his explanatory remarks/' 

"Wasmann understands by instinct not only the so- 
called blind impulses which the animal possesses ante- 
cedent to all experience and as innate properties, but 
also the power of perfqrming those suitable actions 
which are due to experience, to memory, and to asso- 
ciations of sense images. Such actions are not to be 
regarded as intelligent, because they do not transcend 
the realm of sense perceptions. Intelligence exists, ac- 
cording to Wasmann, only where general concepts are 
met with, consequently only in those actions which de- 
mand a power of abstraction. Man alone can abstract ; 
at least we know of no action of animals which can not 
be explained in a simpler way than by assuming a 
power of abstraction. Man is also endowed with in- 
stinct, and acts instinctively, when his mental activity 
is restricted to associations of sense images. Therefore 
Wasmann regards the greater part of what goes for 
"intelligence of animals" as a special form of instinct 
which differs from innate impulses in being due to ex- 
perience and in being acquired by the individual animal. 
The difference between man and animal consists in this, 
that the latter has nothing beyond its innate impulses 
and those which have been acquired and are due to asso- 



Genera! Sense Images and the Power of Abstraction. 77 

ciation of sense images, whereas the former has the ad- 
ditional faculty of forming general concepts by abstrac- 
tion and of applying them for further inference." 

It must be acknowledged that Emery wished to 
understand us, and, therefore, did understand us ; an 
acknowledgment which is not equally applicable to all 
our critics. Following our arguments closely and 
without distorting or avoiding them, he has clearly and 
distinctly explained the real point of difference which 
separates us from the representatives of modern animal 
psychology. 

Let us then examine Emery's objections against 
cur distinction of instinct and intelligence. The first is 
the following : 

"We ask what is meant by an association of sense 
images," and what is understood by a "power of ab- 
straction"? How are they to be distinguished one 
from the other ? An example will help to illustrate our 
meaning. Uncivilized people are fond of glowing 
colors. Thus in the languages of many tribes the same 
term is said to express the color which we call "red" 
and the notion of "pretty." Consequently, the sense 
perception of "red" is connected with the feeling of 
"pretty." Hence the wish arises to possess any object 
of that color. The whole process consists of an asso- 
ciation of sense images and of feelings called forth by 
those images. In this instance man acts just as a dog 
would which, after an olfactory test of a piece of meat, 
is induced to devour it through the combined sense and 
memory images produced by the odor of the meat, the 
gratifying taste, and its awn feeling of hunger. Now 
I could just as well have arranged these processes in 



78 Chapter V. 

the form of syllogisms. The abstract concepts of red, 
pretty, and the odor of meat, which had been gathered 
from a chain of single apprehensions, would have oc- 
curred in the formation of the various propositions. 
These general concepts exist alike, if not explicitly, at 
least implicitly, in the mind of man and in that of the 
dog. But man can formulate them orally, and thus 
they become real abstractions. Herein alone consists 
the difference : it is a mere formal one. In man as well 
as in the brute concepts or cognitions are formed by way 
of induction, by summing up successive experiences, 
eliminating every special and heterogeneous, and retain- 
ing every common and homogeneous element. In this 
way all general concepts are abstracted." 

This is indeed one of the most solid objections which 
can be urged against our distinction of instinct and in- 
telligence. It can be briefly summed up in the follow- 
ing three points : 

i. In the process of human cognition complex 
sense representations and mental abstractions convene 
without definite boundary lines; consequently we are 
not allowed to deny the power of mental abstraction to 
animals, if we accredit them with the faculty of form- 
ing complex sense representations. 

2. Even the processes of sensitive associations in 
animals contain, at least implicite, syllogisms; now, 
between such improper conclusions and the proper con- 
clusions of human intelligence 1 there is no essential 



l ) The former are generally classified as material, and the latter as 
formal conclusions (material reasoning — formal reasoning). But, as 
Emery uses the term "formal" in a different sense, we shall avoid it, in 
order to prevent misunderstandings. 



General Sense Images and the Power of Abstraction. 79 

or interior, but merely a formal, an unessential and ex- 
terior difference. Therefore the power of cognition in 
animals is not essentially different from that of man. 

3. The so called general sense images of sensile 
perception and the general concepts of mental cognition 
are essentially the same; they represent different degrees 
of one and the same power of abstraction. Therefore 
they cannot be wholly denied to animals. 

Let us carefully examine these three difficulties. We 
begin with the first. 

Man possesses instinct and intelligence, a sensitive 
and a spiritual life. While the sensitive life of animals 
only purposes to subserve the gratification of corporal 
wants and thereby tends to preserve the individual as 
well as the species, it has a higher purpose in man. It 
serves as a foundation for the natural activity of his 
spiritual powers. 1 The spiritual powers of cognition 
and volition, and not the sensitive powers, as in animal 
life, are the highest and the primary principles of man's 
end and aim. His sensitive life is not complete in 
itself; it is a part of something that is higher. This 
explains the intimate connection that exists between the 
sensitive and the spiritual life of man. 

Because man has a sensitive-spiritual life, and spirit- 
ual knowledge must first receive its object from sensitive 
perception — nihil est in intellectu, quod non antea fuerit 
in sensu — it is self-evident that sensitive representations 
are most intimately blended and interwoven with 
spiritual cognitions, and their subsequent abstractions 
and conclusions. Intelligence must form its general 
concepts from what is offered by sense representation, 

*) See St, Thorn., "Summ. Theol.," 2, 2, q. 167, a. 2. 



80 Chapter V. 

it must compare these concepts one with the other. 
Thus it is enabled to "think." According to the scho- 
astic theory of cognition of St. Thomas Aquinas the 
sensile imagination must continually assist intelligence 
in its activity by furnishing a "phantasm." Hence the 
only way of grasping the idea of the "spiritual" is by 
denying the properties of things perceived by the senses : 
by eliminating extent and divisibility we conceive its 
characteristic note of "simplicity," and its "spirituality" 
by thinking of its interior non-dependence on matter 
both in existence and action. No representative )i 
aristotelian philosophy has ever denied that sensitive 
and spiritual life in man are most intimately connected 
in their specific activities. However, this close con- 
nection does not exclude their essential difference. 1 
Spiritual cognition is not satisfied with what sensile 
cognition apprehends. It goes a step further. Sensile V 
cognition is confined to an individual object with all 
its exterior qualities, it is restricted to things present in 
space and time, the concrete representation of which is 
reproduced by the sensile memory and combined with 
new perceptions, according to the laws of association of 
sense representations. But this is far from constituting 
a thought. Our intelligence proceeds essentially further 
in its act of cognition. Let us explain our meaning by 
the very example chosen by Prof. Emery. 

If the mental process of the savage were restricted 
to his finding "pretty" whatever has a "red" color, to 
the pleasure excited by its perception and, consequently, 
to his search for, and collection of all objects that are 

l ) See the excellent work on this matter: P. Bonniot, S. J., "La ■ 
bete comparee a rhcmme." Paris, 1889. 



General Sense Images and the Power of Abstraction. 81 

red, we would rightly say that he acts only from instinct; 
he acts like an irrational animal would act which feels 
pleasure at the sight of red things. But there are no 
such savages; their existence is a mere fiction. Even 
the most uncivilized human being takes an essential step 
further in his mental activity. He recognizes the red 
object as a cloth or as glass beads, as a piece of clothing 
or an ornament, as an> object of trade or barter; he 
knows its real or presumed value, he recognizes its pur- 
pose. He thus distinguishes between the red color and 
the object, between the object and its owner; he discerns 
means and ends; in short, he perceives the relations of 
the objects of his sense perceptions to one another and 
to himself, he compares these relations and draws his • 
conclusions to which he adapts his mode of action. The 1/ 
abstract perception of relations, however, essentially pre- 
supposes a mental power of abstraction. We have evi- 
dently much more than an instinctive combination of 
concrete sense representations and feelings. 

For the sake of comparison let us recur to the dog 
that connects the representations of "the odor of meat," 
"the gratifying taste," and "the feeling of hunger," and 
then "acts" accordingly. His sensile memory retains 
the phantasm of a former piece of meat, and of his 
previous gratification through this object, of this cer- 
tain odor and of this certain appearance. This is why 
the dog, under the impulse of his sensile appetite, looks 
for another piece of meat when he is hungry, and then 
devours it with voracity. But, has he, on that account, 
a general concept of meat, which represents it as an 
object of nourishment, or a general concept of the means 
which serve to attain that desirable object. If that 



82 Chapter V. 

were the case, he would not fail to perceive, how men 
get meat for money, and he would arrange his behavior 
accordingly. He would keep and hide any coin that 
he might casually find, or he would -steal from _his 
master, in order to use the money in exchange for meat. 
Then he would run to the butcher's with the coin in his 
mouth, he would lay it upon the counter and point with 
his paw to a specially delicious-looking sausage, he 
would look cunningly at the owner of the tempting 
morsel, or emit a knowing bark in order to manifest 
his desires. I can scarcely think that Emery, or any 
other modern animal psychologist, is able to record such 
facts, or would even earnestly as much as venture to 
think them possible. True, a dog can be trained to 
fetch meat regularly from a certain butcher, and to 
carry a basket with the money in it. But this only 
shows, as we have previously stated in refuting Forel, 
that man is able to impress his own intellectual conclu-j 
sions into the sensile memory of the animal by median 
ical training. Consequently it is evident, that the ' 
animal has no intelligence of its own; otherwise some 
particularly clever dog which had often undertaken 
errands for his master, would undoubtedly have found 
the clue to the evident connection between the money 
and the meat, and thereupon have acted independently 
and for his own interests. However, no dog has ever 
done so, in spite of all possible occasions of developing 
his so-called intelligence during the course of several 
thousand years through his constant companionship 
with man; he does not do it, because he cannot; and he 
is not able to do so, because he can only connect con- = 
erete sense representations according to the laws of in- 



/ 



General Sense Images and the Power of Abstraction. 83 

stinctive association of representations without grasping 
their relations, and without rising to self -consciousness ; 
in short, because he possesses only a sensitive and not a 
spiritual power of cognition. 

How is it, then, with Emery's first difficulty: As 
sensitive associations of representations and spiritual 
abstractions are most intimately connected with one an- 
other in the psychic life, of man, we cannot simply deny 
the existence of these abstractions in the psychic life of 
animals ? But why not ? Emery's conclusion is clearly 
unwarranted. We are not allowed to attribute higher 
faculties to animals than they manifest, and as the 
manifestations of their mental activity do not transcend 
the sphere of sensitive life, it is unlawful to ascribe in- 
telligence and spiritual faculties to them, although both 
these activities are found and are intimately connected 
in man. This is what a scientific and critical psychol- 
ogy postulates. 

Let us now turn to the second point in Prof. 
Emery's objections : that syllogisms are contained at 
least implicitly in the sensitive associations of animals : 
that there is no essential, but only an exterior difference 
between the so-called material and the proper (formal) 
conclusions of the human intellect : that, consequently, 
the cognitive power of animals is not essentially differ- 
ent from human intelligence. 

We readily admit, that the combinations of sense 
representations in. animals are implicitly equivalent to 
formal conclusions. Yet, we positively deny, that there 
is only an exterior and unessential difference between 
such a process of cognition and the explicit conclusions 
of the human intellect. A careful examination of what 



84 Chapter V. 

is meant by material and formal conclusions will at once 
elucidate our meaning. A material conclusion (infer- 
ence), a indicium materiale, 1 as scholastic philosophy 
called it, is a complex sense representation which can 
be resolved into a formal ratiocination by the human 
mind. The very use of the term "material conclu- 
sion" is an acknowledgment of the conviction that an- 
imals do not "think." It is a proof of the intelligence 
of man, who can form the material conclusions of 
animals into proper syllogisms, and not of an intelli- 
gence of the brute. 2 

But in saying this we do not wish to assert, that the 
power of making conclusions is essential to intelligence 
as such. On the contrary, the very necessity of deduc- 
tive thought is a proof of imperfection in the human 
understanding. 3 The divine intellect which beholds 
all truth in one single, eternal intuition, does not require 
the beggarly means of a cognition which advances 
gradually and only step by step. Nor is the faculty of 
the human intellect exclusively confined to deduction, 
but necessarily presupposes the intuitive cognition of 
the first fundamental principles. Moreover, it often 
follows an abbreviated method in its process of reason- 
ing; it uses the enthymeme instead of the syllogism; 
and, in general, the quicker the power of perception, and 
the more active the mind, the shorter and terser all 
mental deductions will evidently become. But, there 
is a difference between these abbreviated intellectual 



1 ) About iudicium materials, virtuale or implicitum see also 
Urraburru, Psychol. P. I., p. 848. 

2 ) See also Reimarus, pp. 39 and 40, and ff. 

3 ) See above p. 37, note 2. 



General Sense Images and the Power of Abstraction. 85 

conclusions and the so-called material conclusions of 
animal cognition, as great, as is the difference between 
day and night. The former are the result of intelli- 
gence, of which they are a more perfect activity than 
is required for the formation of full and complete 
syllogisms, the practice of which they presuppose; the 
latter are not the result of intelligence, but rest upon 
the laws of instinctive association of representations 
which essentially belongs to the sphere of sensitive 
cognition. 

Nor are these material conclusions restricted to those 
sensitive combinations of representations in the psychic 
life of animals, in which one or more elements are taken 
from individual experience, but comprise those also 
which are immediately due to innate, instinctive disposi- 
tions. Let us again recur to the example of the dog. 
When he smells a bone for the first time, and the odor 
excites his appetite, he acts instinctively in attacking it 
at once. For he had so far no experimental knowledge 
of the delicious marrow contained in that bone. This is 
quite in accordance with the doctrine of modern animal 
psychologists. Still, a "material conclusion" is evidently 
contained in that process of sense perception, and can 
be clearly resolved into the following syllogism : What- 
ever emits an odor that excites my appetite, must taste 
well; now, this object emits such an odor: therefore it 
must taste well : ergo I shall at once crunch it. If then, 
the power of forming "material conclusions" is reason 
enought to ascribe intelligence to animals, as many mod- 
erns and among others Tito Vignoli, 1 really do, then 



l ) "Ueber das Fundamentalgesetz der Intelligenz im Thierreich" 
(German edition, Leipzig, 1879), Chapt. 6. 



86 Chapter V. 

we must necessarily designate all instinctive activities 
as intelligent. But this is apparently inappropriate. 
Hence it is equally illogical to style those combinations 
of representations which are due to sense experience, 
intelligent, because they contain "material conclusions/' 
The fundamental reason, why the material conclu- 
sions of sensitive cognition can be resolved into formal 
deductions, is the fact, that they involve regularity 
which can be grasped and cast into syllogistic form by 
the intelligence of man. Nor does this apply only to 
the material conclusions of sensitive cognition, but to 
all processes in nature, which are the embodied expres- 
sion of the regularity of a natural law. It holds good 
for the vegetative processes in animals and plants, for 
the laws of crystallization, of chemical affinity and 
atomicity, as well as for the cosmic laws which govern 
the motions of the celestial bodies. By perceiving the re- 
lation between cause and effect in these phenomena and 
by discovering the laws which govern them, human in- 
telligence can resolve these natural processes into logical 
deductions. Thus even the digestive activity of organic 
life which retains certain parts of matter as lymph for 
the formation of blood, while it secretes other parts as 
useless,, can be analyzed into a long chain of ratio- 
cinations. Only substances of a definite chemical com- 
position are fit for the formation of blood; this sub- 
stance is such a chemical composition: therefore the 
organism must use this and no other substance for the 
alleged purpose. All natural laws are, as it were, em- 
bodied ratiocinations. But the fact that the laws of 
nature are adapted and constantly directed to a given 
purpose, does not warrant any other conclusion, than 



General Sense Images and the Power of Abstraction. 87 

that the first cause of the world and of its harmony must 
be intelligent. Otherwise the adaptability of these laws 
and their constant direction to a certain end could not 
be sufficiently accounted for. 1 Yet, nobody will con- 
clude, that atoms, crystals, and plants possess intelli- 
gence. Nor is it in any way different with the material 
conclusions (material reasoning) of sensitive cognition 
in animals. They only furnish a proof of the intelli- 
gence of a Supreme Being who has suitably created the 
sensitive nature of animals, and a proof of the intelli- 
gence of man who is able to resolve these material into 
formal conclusions, and thereby to make out and de- 
cipher, as it were, the Creator's ideas which He has 
embodied in His creatures. They are no proof whatso- 
ever of the intelligence of animals. 

This discussion will have made it plain that an 
essential and profound difference decidedly exists be- 
tween material and formal conclusions, a difference 
which modern animal psychology tries in vain to narrow 
down or to cover up. The faculty of formal reasoning 
iu man is the foundation of his whole mental activity; 
it soars beyond the mean level of sensitive cognition in 
animals; upon it rests the gift of speech, the mental 
evolution of individuals, the cultural development of 
nations, the possibility of science. Such a difference 
cannot rightly be styled unessential and merely exterior. 

There still remains the third point of Emery's ob- 
jection: the so-called general sense images and general 
concepts of animal and human cognition. They are 



x ) See the beautiful passages of S. Thorn., 1, 2, q. 13, a. 2 ad 3; 
q. 40, a. 3; "Summa c. Gentiles," 1, 3, c. 24 (quodlibet opus naturae 
est opws substantiae intelligentis). 



88 Chapter V. 

said to be essentially the same, and to represent only 
different degrees or stages of one and the same power 
of abstraction. Consequently, this power should not be 
totally denied to the animal. 

What are general sense images? -When a harrier 
scents a hare, it is guided in chasing it by a "general 
sense image,' 1 as we say, or by a "general phantasm" of 
that animal ; for it does not track the same hare which 
it pursued .sometime ago, but another animal of the same 
species, whose individual qualities are as yet unknown 
to it What is the characteristic of this "general sense 
image," this "general" phantasm of a hare in the dog's 
brain? As we do not share a canine nature with the 
animal in question, we must necessarily try to solve this 
problem from the analogy which exists between the 
general sense images of animals and those of our own 
sensile imagination; nor must we omit to pay due re- 
gard to the differences which prevail between the outer 
senses of man and those of the dog. When a sports- 
man sallies forth to shoot hares, and pictures to himself 
the object of his quest, this sense representation will 
always contain the image of an absolutely specified hare 
with its individual and special properties. It is "gen- 
eral* 9 only in so far as the modifications which dis- 
tinguish this imaginative hare from all other individuals 
of its species, are only obscurely represented, and be- 
long, as it were, to the background of the image-, 
whereas the properties which are common to all hares, 
the size of the body, the long ears, the color are, so to 
say, in the foreground of the representation. Or, per- 
haps our sportsman pictures to himself an unusually big 
and beautiful hare which he would be delighted to bag. 



General Sense Images and the Pozver of Abstraction. 89 

Then the image is even still less "general," because it 
represents a very specified hare of such excellent quali- 
ties as are scarcely possessed by any hare in reality. 
What must we conclude from this fact? It follows, 
that the imagination of man is never able to picture a 
hare in general, but only a concrete and individual 
animal of these or those qualities. This representation 
is either nothing more than a vivid reproduction of 
former sight perceptions, in which case the "general 
sense image" is a concrete and individualized image of 
the memory, or special features which have been taken 
from former sense perceptions, are added to the original 
representation by the combining and producing power 
of the imagination, and result in a fascinating picture 
of an idealized hare, — in which case the "general sense 
image" is again decidedly concrete and individual. 
Therefore, a general sense image of a hare does not 
exist, nor can it possibly exist. Whosoever takes the 
trouble to reflect on this subject, and carefully examines 
the representations (phantasms) which arise in his own 
memory and fancy, will be forced to acknowledge it. 
So much for the sense images of man. 

But of what nature is the "general sense image" in 
the brain of the harrier? The elements of olfactory 
perceptions are, without doubt, the chief constituents of 
sense representations in canines, whilst general sense 
images consist mainly of sight perceptions in man. 
Consequently, the scent will take the first place in the 
sensile memory of the dog; but its object will be indi- 
vidualized, as is the case in our sense images, it will be 
that of a definite hare, and not the scent of the hare in 
"general." Now, when the dog sights another animal 



1/ 



90 Chapter V. 

of the same species, a combined "sense image" which 
results from the prevailing scent perception and from 
a former sight image will immediately be produced in 
his brain. We may call this new representation a 
memory image, if we chiefly consider the reproductive 
activity, or an image of the fancy, if we choose to dwell 
on the combining power of sensile perception. But 
the fancy of animals does not posses the procreative 
power of selection of the human fancy, nor its produc- 
tive quality of reconstruction. There are no artists 
among animals nor geniuses of art as among men. 1 Nev- 
ertheless we may justly apply the term ' 'fancy" to the 
combining activity of their sensitive imagination. Now, 
what does this image of the memory — or of the fancy, 
represent to the dog ? Perhaps a hare in general ? By 
no means. Its object is a concrete and individual hare, 
which can be called "general" only in an improper 
sense, in as far as its individual features are obscurely 
and indefinitely outlined, but never general in the proper 
acceptance of the term. For it is absolutely impossible 
for any sensitive power of perception to represent only 
the specific properties and omit all individual differ- 
ences. 

The fact, that this falsely called "general" sense 
image is indistinct in individual features, explains why 
the dog chases any hare he happens to come across, and 
not only this or that individual animal. Still, it is cer- 
tainly true, that the sensile imagination of man ^and 



l ) The activity of the sensitive imagination displayed in the case of 
many art instincts could best be compared with the productive activity 
of the human fancy. (See "Der Trichterwickler," S. 156 ff.). In a 
similar manner this holds good for the nest building instincts of birds. 



General Sense Images and the Power of Abstraction. 91 

of animals can omit concrete circumstances of time and 
space. The sensile memory often reproduces only 
those elements of the object, to which attention was 
more closely drawn in former sense perceptions; for 
they have mostly made a deeper impression than the 
accompanying circumstances, and are, consequently, 
more easily reproduced. Thus also those qualities of 
the object come out most clearly and distinctly in its 
reproduced image, which made the strongest impression 
in the original sense perception, while the rest are dis- 
carded. The saying, therefore, that the sensile imagi- 
nation is able to abstract from circumstances of place 
and time, means nothing beyond the assertion, that the 
stronger sense impressions are more readily and sharply 
reproduced than the weaker. This is all that can be 
said on the power of abstraction of the sensile memory 
and imagination. 

It is true, I am able to imagine the various colors, 
as "green," "red," "blue," and, in general, any definite 
color, or, rather, any object of a definite color, without 
picturing to myself a specifically limited surface, or a 
definitely limited body. Consequently it might seem 
as if the sensile imagination were endowed with the 
faculty of abstracting the colors of an object from its 
extension. Still, the explanation we have just given is 
equally applicable to this phenomenon. For, if it were 
a question of abstraction in the proper sense of the 
word, we ought, vice versa, to be able to fancy an 
object of definite extension without any definite color. 
However, this is impossible. In reproducing a sight 
perception our imagination seems to be able to discard 
the definite extension of a colored object, because color 



J 



92 Chapter V. 

is the primary and peculiar object of the sense of sight, 
whereas extension is only one of its secondary objects, 
for the perfect perception of which it Heeds the assist- 
ance of another sense, namely, that of touch. 1 This 
is also the reason, why in one and the same act of 
the imagination the element of color can be clearly 
reproduced, whilst that of extension is expressed in an 
indistinct and obscure manner. 

Therefore, we may state that a sensitive power of 
abstraction does not exist; for there are no "general/' 
but only "individual and concrete sense images/' in. which 
individual features come out more or less distinctly, 
and, consequently, produce a greater or less individual 
similarity. In accordance with the laws of sensitive 
associations, this similarity arouses in the huntsman, 
when the hare rises, that exciting pleasure he takes in 
his sport, the first source of which, even in man, is the 
sensile and not the spiritual appetite. On the analogy 
which exists between this sensitive element in the 
psychic activities of man and of animals, we must base 
our judgment of their psychic life. Whatever tran- 
scends this sensitive element is found only in man, and 
not in the animal. 

And what is it that transcends this sensitive ele- 
ment? It is the general concepts and conclusions of 
the intellect. The activity of the intellect is not merely 
confined to sense perceptions and sensile phantasms; it 
does not merely connect them one with the other ac- 
cording to the laws of instinctive association of repre- 
sentations, it goes much further: it compares the dif- 

1 ) For this reason scholastic philosophy called color a sensibile 
proprium, and extension a sensibile commune, 



General Sense Images and the Power of Abstraction, 98 

ferent sense representations, examines their similarity 
and dissimilarity, their objective coherence and non- 
coherence, it searches into the casual relations which 
link them together or to the sentient subject: it thus 
rises to general concepts and draws conclusions by con- 
necting them. This logical and mental activity of tte 
intellect, and this alone, involves a power of abstraction 
in the proper sense of the term. Intelligence alohe dis- 
tinguishes between essential and unessential, between 
specific and individual properties, between the charac- 
teristic marks of the genus and of the family, it alone 
is able to conceive the hare as a member of a certain 
zoological system. Now, if such a conception sur- 
passes even the powers of the sensile imagination of 
man, how much more is it beyond those of the animal. 
The elder Reimarus hinted at this truth, when he wrote : 
"The instinctive knowledge; (of animals) seems to 1 recogv 
nize not only single objects, but also species and genera. 
For the dog can distinguish fruit from meat, and tame 
animals from beasts of prey; an ox or a sheep can dis- 
tinguish any poisonous herb from healthy fodder; the 
male of any animal can distinguish the females of the 
same species from those of another. Have they, then, 
general concepts? Have they separate representations 
of the similarity of different single objects? Have they 
a genealogical table of objects laid out in their brains? 
By no means, as is evident from the foolish errors they 
are liable to commit. When they experience the same 
feeling as the result of the most different objects, they 
deem those objects identical." 1 



l ) "Allgemeine Betrachtungen ueber die Triebe der Thiere.," 3d 
edition, Hamburg, 1773, p. 33. 



J 



94 Chapter V. 

Of course modern psychologists have tried to dem- 
onstrate, that monkeys have some knowledge of the 
systematic relationship which prevails -in the animal 
kingdom. Yet, these would-be proofs are based on 
nothing more solid than some observations which show 
that monkeys have a similar dread of blind worms, 
lizards and turtles as they have of poisonous snakes. 
The behavior of these monkeys is easily explained by 
the exterior similarity of dangerous and non-dangerous 
reptiles, and is fully understood from the laws of sen- 
sitive association. It implies a monstrous lack of judg- 
ment to infer from such observations, that monkeys 
possess an idea of zoological relationship. Nor does 
this lack of critical acumen become less ridiculous from 
the fact, that not only a Brehm, but even such men as 
Charles Darwin were liable to it. It only shows the 
real worth of "proofs" advanced in favor of the "descent 
of man from the animal." 1 

More thorough psychologists who, with Emery, ac- 
knowledge the necessity of a clear analysis of psycho- 
logical concepts, will avow, that such proofs of animal 
intelligence are untenable. But it is equally untenable 
to claim that the general sense images differ from the 
general concepts of the intellect only in degree, and not 
in kind. We can therefore briefly sum up our points 
of argument : 

General sense images do not exist, they are even im- 
possible. Intelligence alone can form general concepts; 
therefore, no spiritual pozverof abstraction is in question 
in the so-called general sense images of animals. They 



*) 'The Descent of Man," I. Cbapt. 3, n. 111. 



General Sense Images and the Power of Abstraction. 95 

lend no evidence whatsoever to the plea, that instinct 
and intelligence, or, that the sensitive life of animals and 
the spiritual life of man differ only in degree and not 
in kind. On the contrary, our discussion makes it 
evident, that there is an essential difference between 
them. 



s 



CHAPTER VI. 

INTELLIGENCE AND SPEECH. 

ACCORDING to Emery the difference between 
l human and animal cognition consists chiefly in 
the possession and non-possession of speech. He dis- 
tinctly states- that sense and memory images develop 
into genuine abstractions through oral articulation. 
"This is the only difference. It is a mere formal one, ,J 
However, we have shown that the difference between 
material and formal conclusions, between general sense 
images and genuine abstractions is not unessential nor 
merely exterior, but one that arises from the totally 
different natures of the sensitive and the spiritual, of 
the powers of cognition in the brute and in man. This 
at once overthrows Emery's second objection concern- 
ing the importance of speech. Still as he is by no means 
the only one who maintains these views on the relation 
of speech to intelligence, 1 we deem it necessary to treat 

1 ) More than a century and a half ago Christian Wolff advocated 
similar opinions. "Vernuenftige Gedanken von Gott, der Welt und der 
Seele des Menschen," etc. (8 Aufl. Halle, 1741, the first edition was 
issued 1720), No. 834: "Wir pflegen den Dingen insoweit sie einander 
aehnlich sind, und also entweder von einer Art seyn, oder zu einem 
Geschlechte gehoeren, einerley Nahmen zu geben. Und durch Huelfle 
dieses Nahmens sondern wir gleichsam ab, was sie mit einander gemein 
haben. Und sind dann die Woerter oder auch andere Zeichen das Mittel 
dadurch wir allgemeine Erkaentniss erlangen." In our opinion Wolff 
does not wish to assert with several modern philosophers, that general 
knowledge is a consequence of word formation, but only that its ac- 
quirement is essentially facilitated by the latter. See No. 867: "Da die 
Woerter zur Deutlichkeit der allgemeinen Erkaentniss dienen: hingegen 
aber die Vernunft sich auf die Deutlichkeit der Erkaentniss gruendet, so 
befoerdert die Sprache oder auch der Gebrauch anderer Zeichen die den 
Woertern gleichgueltig (gleichwertig) sind, oder sie sogar oefters ueber- 

96 



Intelligence and Speech. 97 

the objection more in detail. After having falsely as- 
cribed a power of abstraction to animals, Emery con- 
tinues : 

"The power of abstraction in man far surpasses that 
of the animal, as the former is endowed with speech, 
an essential instrument, which is wanting to the latter. 
It is through the word that general impressions or con- 
cepts, such as "red," which have been abstracted from 
a number of sense perceptions, become in turn a con- 
crete, phonetic or graphic sense image, and can without 
regard to their origin be used in combination with other 
general concepts which have been abstracted in a sim- 
ilar manner, and be made perceptible to the senses. We 
combine red, blue, green, yellow, etc., to the higher 
concept of "color," and consider color, weight, odor, etc., 
as the "properties of things." Thus we rise higher and 
higher, from abstraction to abstraction, to the lofty 
regions of metaphysics, to a sphere as inaccessible to the 
animal as that of arithmetic. The history of math- 
ematics can serve as an illustration of the constant 
progress of the human mind through advancement 
in symbolic means of expression. In a similar manner 
the character of its language produces the peculiar 
genius and poetry of each individual nation." 

"Consequently the main difference between the 
mental faculties of man and of animals consists, in 
my opinion, in the fact that man can speak. He uses 



treffen, den Gebrauch der Vernunft." Language is, according to Wolff, 
a very important, yea, a necessary means for man to arrive at the 
normal use of his understanding; still it is not the cause of reason, but, 
vice versa, reason is the cause of speech. Now, what holds good for 
the individual, holds good for the whole race; and this is why mankind 
did not become reasonable only with the development of speech, 



98 Chapter VI. 

language not only to communicate his feelings and 
experiences to his fellow men, but still more to extend 
and to generalize his knowledge through phonetic or 
graphic memory images or symbols. This raises him 
to an immeasurable height above the highest animal. 
However, I cannot deny a slight power of abstraction 
to animals. Probably it does not go beyond abstrac- 
tions of the first order, those which immediately result 
from sense perceptions and feelings, and in the human 
being refer to the properties of things, to feelings and 
emotions. Higher animals, as dogs and monkeys, are 
able to connect such general notions with sense percep- 
tions of the present, and with memory images of the 
past, and, thereby, to act intelligently not only in ap- 
pearance, but in truth. If we possessed a scale of 
abstractions, we might possibly assign a limit. But 
who can specify the capability of a dog or a monkey 
in acquiring general knowledge ? Can a certain animal 
gather the notion of color in general from the notions 
of the single colors? or the general notion of the 
bird from the memory images of various feathered 
creatures? or is it unable to do so? We do not know, 
and probably never shall know/' 

"This is not the place to treat on the origin of 
language, but we can justly inquire, whether animals 
possess anything that can be compared with articulate 
speech in man. Animals manifest their feelings by 
spontaneous motion and sound. They utter calls. It 
is difficult to determine in how far such utterances are 
the result of unconscious impulse or of rational inten- 
tion. The latter seems to me not to be so very im- 
probable, at least in single cases. But be it as it may, 



Intelligence and Speech. 99 

any cry or any gesture renders a state of emotion or 
feeling perceptible to the senses, and if such perceptions 
be stored up in the memory, they could possibly become 
a symbol of the psychic condition of another animal, 
even when that condition is not outwardly manifested. 
Consequently it is imaginable, though not strictly 
proven, that in these memory images animals possess 
something similar to the phonetic symbols of human 
speech. Still, animals do not seem to have improved 
their phonetics beyond the reproduction of emotions 
(feelings) and other unconscious sounds. They do not 
possess speech in the strict sense of the word/' 

"Let us briefly sum up the points of our discussion. 
The answer to the question, whether animals possess 
instinct only, or also intelligence, depends, as we said, 
on the definition of those mental faculties. In my view 
we cannot deny a limited power of abstraction to ani- 
mals. Man has advanced its boundaries further and 
further by developing articulate speech. Now, if we 
restrict intelligence to zvhat can be accomplished by the 
help of phonetic-graphic symbols of speech, then man 
alone possesses intelligence and animals do not. If, 
however, we wish to consider intelligence as the power 
of gathering general concepts from the manifold images 
gained by experience, and of using them for conscious, 
suitable actions by combining them with present sense 
perceptions, and if we regard as instinctive only those 
actions which are unconsciously adaptive, then animals 
are also intelligent, although in a limited degree. 3 ' 

"Allow me for a moment to allude to the religious 
point of view. That which distinguishes man from the 
brute, is speech ; it alone can be regarded as God's gift. 

Lot ft 



1Q0 Chapter VI. 

Through the possession of speech man has attained a 
higher development of his mind. The history of lan- 
guage is simultaneously the history of man and of 
human intelligence." 

The following main points can be traced in Emery's 
exposition on the relation of speech to intelligence: 

1. The intellect of man was not only developed by 
the help of language, but his high intelligence is the 
consequence, not the cause of the existence of human 
speech. 

2. Higher animals also possess abstractions of the 
iirst order, and therefore they act intelligently not only 
in appearance, but in truth. 

3. Animals possess something that can be com- 
pared to human speech. Yet, they are devoid of speech 
in the strict sense of the word. 

4. Not only what can be accomplished through the 
aid of phonetic-graphic symbols of speech must be 
regarded as intelligence, but also the power of forming 
general concepts and the power of consciously adaptive 
action. 

We shall shortly prove the first of these four points 
to be untenable. The second we have previously re- 
futed in demonstrating that Emery's "abstractions of 
the first order" are nothing more than general sense 
images, complex sense representations and sensile affec- 
tions of animal instinct. We fully acknowledge the 
truth of the third and fourth points. But we infer 
therefrom the very opposite conclusion: that animals 
have no intelligence. 

Let us take up the different points as far as nec- 
essary. 



Intelligence and Speech. 101 

I. What is the real relation between human speech 
and human intelligence? True it is, that speech is a 
most useful instrument to quicken and develop intel- 
lectual culture in the individual and in entire nations. 
Our daily experience proves this to be the case. It 
may be gathered from the study of child-life, and it is 
confirmed by the history of nations. The introduction 
of graphic language is, so to say, the first step towards 
a higher degree of cultural development. Speech ob- 
viously facilitates abstract thought. For the very fact 
that most of our representations and notions are ac- 
quired through verbal and graphic signs, renders the 
activity of the understanding, the comparison of ideas 
and logical deductions far more simple and safe. 
Again, when a child of six years is taught to read, the 
knowledge of the word often precedes that of the con- 
cept. The latter must first be explained by the teacher 
and brought home to the child which, without some 
previous knowledge, cannot even grasp the explanation, 
nor the meaning of words which are as yet unknown. 
The causal relation between speech and intelligence is, 
therefore, the very opposite of the view favored by 
Emery : Speech is not the cause of the high intelligence y 
of man, but his high intelligence is the cause of speech. 
Speech is only the condition of the normal development 
of the human understanding in the individual as well as 
with entire nations. Intelligence, on the other hand, is 
the cause of speech and not merely its condition. A 
simple analysis of any sentence, as : "The leaves are 
green," will clearly prove the truth of this position. In 
this sentence "green" is affirmed as predicate to the 
subject "leaf." Now, this oral assertion presuppose 



102 Chapter VI. 

a judgment of the intellect which combines the concepts 
"leaf" and "green" and affirms the latter as a property 
or condition of the former. Otherwise the sentence 
"The leaves are green," would be an inane and mean- 
ingless assertion. 

Consequently it is clear that the verbum oris (the 
oral or phonetic, and graphic expression of our con- 
cepts and ideas) presupposes the verbum mentis (the 
concept of the intellect and the idea itself), and does not 
produce it. As a concept of the intellect, the idea "leaf" 
is, prior to its oral utterance, a real general concept; 
it is a genuine abstraction which was originally gathered 
from the sense perceptions and sense phantasms of in- 
numerable single leaves. Likewise the concept "green" 
is a real general and intellectual concept, a real ab- 
straction, before it is used in oral discourse; it was 
abstracted by the intellect from different green objects 
with their variegated shades of that color, and then 
raised to a general concept. Therefore it is wrong to 
say with Emery that general concepts of the intellect 
i£ grow into real abstractions only through oral utter- 
ance. 3 ' 

The doctrine of Aristotelian philosophy, that the 
verbum mentis precedes the verbum oris, is therefore 
in full harmony with common sense. There must first 
be a concept in the mind, before it can be expressed by 
the mouth. And, if this priority is not observed, the 
saying of a German poet holds good, that words come 
to the rescue where ideas are wanting. The Tradi- 
tionalism of de Bonald and of his school, during the 
first half of the nineteenth century, has in vain tried 
to shake this fundamental truth of the old theory of 



Intelligence and Speech. 103 

cognition. It was overwhelmed by evident contradic- 
tions against common sense which it could not avoid. 
And even Max Mueller was unsuccessful in his attempt 
to revive it in a more up-to-date form. 1 

To quote a modern naturalist, W. Preyer, 2 on the 
relation of speech to intelligence : "In reality it was not 
speech that produced intelligence, but it was intelligence 
that invented speech; and even in our times the new- 
born infant is endowed with more intelligence, than 
skill for speech. Man does not think, because he has 
learned to speak, but he learned to speak because he 
thinks/' As surely as we must affirm: Nihil in intel- 
lects quod non antea fuerit in sensu, so surely must we 
say with Regnaud: 3 Nihil in dictu, quod non antea 
fuerit in intellectu. 

It may then be regarded as an established fact, that 
speech is not the cause of the high intelligence of man, ^/ 
but that the high intelligence of man is the cause of 
speech. Nor are the phonetic-graphic symbols of sound 
indispensable, even as a condition, for the development 
of individual intelligence. We call to mind the case of 
Laura Bridgman, who at the age of two years, after 
a severe illness, became entirely deaf and blind, and al- 
most lost the senses of smell and taste. With her in- 



x ) On the synergastic theory of Noiree and Max Mueller see Dr. 
Alex. Giesswein, "Die Hauptprobleme der Sprachwissenschaft in ihren 
Beziehungen zur Theologie, Philosophic und Anthropologic" (Freiburg 
I. B., 1892), S. 169 ff". Also Gutberlet, "Der Mensch" (Paderborn, 
1896), S. 368 ff. On the speechlessness of isolated children see Rauber, 
"Homo sapiens ferus" (Leipzig, 1885), and Gutberlet, especially 
page 261 ff. 

2 ) "Die Seele des Kindes," (3. Aurlage), S. 295. 

3 ) Regnaud, "Origine et philosophic du langage" (Paris, 1888), p. 
293. See also Giesswein, especially p. 162. 



104 Chapter VI. 

telligence, which was not impaired, the sense of touch 
alone was left to the afflicted child. , It is astonishing 
what human intelligence was able to accomplish in her 
case, even without the normal assistance of exterior 
sense perceptions and speech. In spite of the extremely 
limited means of communication by the sense of touch, 
Dr. Howe succeeded in gradually leading the afflicted 
girl to a perception and knowledge of surrounding ob- 
jects, and even in teaching her to read and write by 
means of embossed type. The following passage is 
taken literally from Dr. Howe's report i 1 

"The first experiment was made by taking the 
articles in common use, such as knives, forks, spoons, 
keys, etc., and pasting upon them labels, with their 
names embossed in raised letters. These she felt care- 
fully, and soon, of course, distinguished that the crooked 
lines s-p-o-o-n differed as much from the crooked lines 
k-e-y, as the spoon differed from the key in form. Then 
small detached labels with the same words printed upon 
them were put into her hands; she soon observed that 
they were the same as those pasted upon the articles. 
She showed her perception of this similarity by laying 
the label k-e-y upon the key, and the label s-p-o-o-n 
upon the spoon. 

"Hitherto the process had been mechanical, and the 
success about the same as that of teaching a very know- 
ing dog a variety of tricks. 2 



1 ) Taken from Sir John Lubbock, "On the Senses, Instincts and 
Intelligence of Animals" (3d edition, London, 1889), p. 275. 

2 ) In reality Howe's success was decidedly greater. This will be 
understood when we remember that the girl was entirely blind and 
deaf. The clever poodle Van did not succeed to the same degree in 
profiting by Lubbock's instructions, in spite of its excellent organs of 
sense perception. 



Intelligence and Speech. 105 

"The poor child sat in mute amazement, and pa- 
tiently imitated everything her teacher did. But now 
her intellect began to work, the truth flashed upon her, 
and she perceived that there was a way by which she 
could herself make a sign of anything that was in her 
own mind, and show it to another mind. At once her 
countenance lighted up with a human expression. It 
was no longer as a mere instinctive animal; it was an 
immortal spirit, eagerly seizing upon a new link of 
union with other spirits. I could almost fix upon the 
moment when this truth dawned upon her mind, and 
spread its beams upon her countenance ; I saw that the 
great obstacle was overcome, and that henceforth noth- 
ing but patient and persevering, but plain and straight- 
forward efforts were necessary." 

What was this beam of light that brightened the 
dreary darkness of this poor creature's mind shut off 
from communication with the sensile world? Was it 
speech? No, it was intelligence ; intelligence that in- 
vented speech as a means of communicating with other 
rational beings. 

In contrast with the case of Laura Bridgman let us 
now consider the training of a higher animal which 
was endowed with excellent faculties of sense percep- 
tion. Lubbock exerted all his ingenuity to teach his 
clever poodle Van 1 how to think. He gave it lessons 
in reading, by having the word "food" and other words 
which represented ideas congenial to "dog intelligence" 
printed in large letters on different slips. He then 
trained Van to fetch the card with the label "food" 



*) Lubbock, op. cit., p. 277: "Van and his cards." 



/ 



U 



106 Chapter VI. 

when it wanted nourishment, or another card with the 
word "out" when it wished to take its constitutional. 
After long and tiresome attempts at training, Lubbock 
succeeded with a small number of words. The con- 
crete combination of die sound perception "food" with 
the sight perception of a certain arrangement of letters 
was gradually imprinted into the sensile memory of 
the poodle, combined with which was the experience 
of being fed, when its master mentioned "food." 
Thus it happened that with the feeling of appetite 
the phantasm of the label "food" was reproduced 
in Van's imagination. But this is quite in keep- 
ing with those laws of sensitive association of 
representations which Wundt calls "contact associ- 
ation." This is why the dog fetched the label "food" 
when it felt hungry. We find therefore that our clever 
poodle Van combined certain sense images with cor- 
responding affections, both of which had been gained 
by experience; and, furthermore, we find phonetic and 
graphic symbols, the elements of oral and written lan- 
guage. Now, if Van had been endowed with intelli- 
gence, and were it merely a "limited intelligence of a 
dog," the latter ought to have been developed by the 
help of speech and been stirred up to independent 
activity. Nevertheless this did not happen. The dog's 
activity did not rise above combined sense representa- 
tions mechanically impressed on its mind by the human 
intelligence of its teacher. It did not contribute in the 
least to its own further development. Nor did it ever 
occur to Van to instruct its little friend Patience, its 
mistress' lap-dog, in the new-fangled language; nor did 
dear little Patience hit upon the obvious idea of imi- 



Intelligence and Speech. 107 

tating Van's example and fetching the label "food," 
when she felt hungry; although, as we are told by 
Lubbock, Patience had often seen that Van was re- 
warded with a piece of bread for bringing that very 
label. This "idea" did not occur to Patience, although 
it was obviously the connecting link between the food 
and the label ; nor did Van communicate it to her. Why 
not? The only answer worthy of an unprejudiced 
psychologist is : Because neither Van nor Patience pos- 
sessed a spark of individual intelligence. The only in- 
telligence manifest in the transaction was that of their 
master and teacher, Sir John Lubbock. 

The experiments in the well-known case of Voit, 1 
which prove the possibility of intellectual thought with- 
out the help of words are of peculiar interest in our 
present inquiry. Owing to a lesion of his skull, Voit 
had lost his memory to such an extent that he could 
find the names of objects present to his senses only by 
writing them down. As he gradually grew incapable 
of making any motion required in writing, be it of his 
hands, feet, or even of his tongue, he was absolutely 
unable to find the necessary word. And, still, in this 
state of "graphic enchainment," he perfectly understood 
the connection between different objects, even without 
the help of the corresponding term. Thus being asked 
for a word applicable to a guitar and a trumpet that 
were shown him, he shook his head in the negative; 
but on being asked whether both objects belonged to- 
gether, he immediately nodded. However, he was onh 



l ) "Zeitschrift fuer Psychologie und Physiologie der Sinnesorgane," 
2, 260 ff. See also Gutberlet, op. cit., p. 369. 



J 



108 Chapter VI. 

able to find the term "musical instrument" after having 
been "unchained/' In view of this 'fact, A. Pick 1 
remarks : "Although Max Mueller denies the possibility 
of thought without speech, Voit's "understanding with- 
out words" "proves more than entire volumes of theo- 
retical discussions." 

In treating these examples we have sufficiently dis- 
proved Emery's objection, that human intelligence was 
developed from the power of speech, and that speech 
was the cause of intelligence. Let us now briefly sum 
up the results of our examination : 

It is erroneous to state that general concepts of the 
intellect grow into genuine abstractions only by being 
expressed in language. It is equally erroneous to as- 
sign the possession of phonetic-graphic symbols of 
speech as the real cause of the high power of abstraction 
in man. The very contrary is true. Words are the 
expressions or manifestations of thought, human speech 
is the expression of his intelligence. Without his in- 
telligence man would never have attained the gift of 
speech, and even if God had miraculously bestowed 
it on him, human intelligence would have been the 
necessary presupposition for its acceptance. In other 
words : do away with intelligence, and you do away with 
all logical possibility and psychological necessity of lan- 
guage. The logical possibility : for nihil in dictu, quod 
non antea fuerit in intellects The psychological ne- 
cessity; for nobody tries to express concepts which he 
does not have; and all who have intelligence, will un- 
failingly experience the necessity of communicating 



1 ) "Zeitschrift fuer Psychologie und Physiologie der Sinnesorgane, 1 
3, 54. 



Intelligence and Speech. 109 

their thoughts to other intelligent beings, that is, they 
will experience the necessity of language. 1 

II. Properly speaking, there is no necessity of al- 
luding to Emery's second assertion that higher animals 
have at least abstractions of the first order, and act 
intelligently not only in appearance, but in truth, be- 
cause this statement is sufficiently explained by his 
error in taking so-called general sense images for genu- 
ine abstractions. The former have nothing to do with 
a spiritual power of abstraction; they are only the 
foundation, the raw material, as it were, of its charac- 
teristic activity. Hence, Emery's "abstractions of the 
first order in animals" are no abstractions at all, nor do 
they belong to the sphere of intellectual life, but to the 
instinctive activity of the senses. It is true that "ab- 
stractions of the first order" are met with in man which 
are undoubtedly abstractions ~ in the proper sense of the 
word. To this class belong our first intellectual con- 
cepts and judgments on the properties of things that can 
be perceived by the senses, as : "The leaf is green," 
"Sugar is sweet." Such intellectual concepts and judg- 
ments presuppose complex sense representations, from 
which they are abstracted. But does the fact that gen- 
eral sense images in man develop into proper abstrac- 
tions of the first order furnish an argument for the 
same process in the psychic life of animals? Emery 
does not substantiate his assertion by a single proof. 
Consequently we are justified in saying that it is an 
arbitrary humanization of the animal. Even Emery in- 



l ) This is also confirmed by the fact that some children framed a 
language for themselves (see Giesswein op. cit., p. 19a ft\, and Gut- 
berlet, p. 378 ft,). 



110 Chapter VI. 

sinuates this truth in answering a question he had put : 
"Does a dog or monkey gather the concept of 'color' 
in general from the notions of the single colors, and 
the notion of a bird from the memory images of vari- 
ous feathered creatures ? Or is it unable to do so ? This 
we do not know and probably never shall know." He 
professes not to know whether higher animals have any 
general concepts beyond abstractions of the first order; 
but in that case it is inconsistent on his part to admit 
any genuine abstractions in the psychic life of animals, 
even those of the first order; for the latter necessarily 
contain a general concept in the strictest acceptance of 
the term. It is an essential element of every true com- 
parison. If we cannot know whether a dog derives 
the notion of color in general from the notions of the 
single colors, then we do not know whether it forms 
the general notion of "red" or "green" from the con- 
crete manifestations of these colors in the objects of its 
sense perceptions. 

But we are forced to take a step further. As abstrac- 
tions of the first order in man essentially presuppose a 
real power of abstraction, and as there are no reliable 
manifestations of such a power in animals, we must con- 
clude that animals have no intelligence. For, even an 
abstractive power of the first order must manifest itself 
in formal intellectual judgments, and this power of 
inference must necessarily influence and show itself in 
the activity of the animal. Consequently, if we find 
no outward manifestations of such a power we are not 
allowed to say: we know of no abstractive power in the 
psychic life of animals, but must assert that animals 
have none. 



Intelligence and Speech. Ill 

And furthermore it is impossible to possess ab- 
stractions of the first order without the natural inclina- 
tion to communicate them to other beings of the same 
kind. But a communication of general notions on the 
properties of things perceptible to the senses essentially 
implies the use of language similar to that of man. 
Why then are dogs and monkeys without it? That 
they have none, is admitted even by Emery. But we 
inquire further : why have they none ? We cannot shove 
this embarrassing question aside by merely referring 
to the different structure of the larynx in man and in 
the higher animals. For nothing more would be re- 
quired of them than a mutual agreement and definite 
arrangement of their inarticulate sounds as arbitrary 
signs or symbols of their general concepts and abstrac- 
tions of the first order. The result would indeed be a 
rough and disagreeable language, very deficient in 
words and constructions, still a language similar to that 
of man. Very many dogs and monkeys are able, as we 
know, to vary and modulate the sounds they utter ac- 
cording to various sensile affections of which these 
sounds are the immediate expressions. What then is 
wanting to establish a language? It is not the want 
of sounds, but of the possibility and necessity of mutu- 
ally combining and intelligently arranging these sounds 
as arbitrary, conventional signs of their concepts and 
ideas. If animals really possessed genuine abstractions, 
even those of "the first order/' the possibility and 
necessity of a language would be the immediate result. 
Consequently, from the lack of language even in the 
highest mammal, we can and must infer the lack of 
intelligence. 



112 Chapter VI. 

It is true that not only the higher but likewise many 
lower animals, and especially insects which live in colo- 
nies, have something that can be compared to human 
speech. But this is not the place to discuss the nonsense 
that has been written in recent times about the pretend- 
ed language of animals in pseudo-scientific circles of 
America 1 and Europe. Moreover it would be unjust 
to Mr. Emery, to place him on a level with such psy- 
chologists as Hosea Ballou, I. Bregenzer and R. L. Gar- 
ner. Consequently we may well pass on to the third 
point of Emery's argumentation. 

He agrees that the analogon of human speech which 
is found in animals, is altogether different from the lan- 
guage of man. The latter is the result of a conscious, 
intelligent combination of certain sounds with certain 
general concepts and judgments. On the other hand, 
Emery finds it "difficult to determine" in how far the 
use of inarticulate sounds depends on an unconscious 
impulse in animals, and in how far it depends on a 
rational intention. The latter seems to him "not so very 
improbable," at least in some cases. However, such 
vague unsubstantiated conjectures .cannot claim any 
consideration in a critical discussion of psychic life. 
Whatsoever proofs he alleges, do not at all bear on his 



x ) We must add a note on a book published some years ago in 
America by R. L. Garner on "The Speech of Monkeys." Mistaking 
the inarticulate chattering of monkeys for a true language by which 
they manifest and communicate their sensitive feelings, poor Mr. 
Garner dreamt that he could prove the existence of monkey "speech," 
and possibly interpret it. All German critics who have taken notice of 
Mr. Garner's book in scientific reviews, concur in the well-founded re- 
proach that the author has no idea of the rules of scientific psychology, 
and is utterly devoid of critical judgment. Even W. Marshall, who 
translated the book into German, was compelled to confess that the au- 
thor suffers from an exuberant imagination. 



Intelligence and Speech. 113 

conjecture, but only show the existence of sentiency in 
animals, not that of intelligence. We find it not only 
probable but self-understood, that the cries of pain 
uttered by any animal of a higher species and heard by 
another of its own kind, cling to the sensile memory of 
the latter animal, and are liable to become, as it were, 
manifestations and signs of a psychic condition which 
cannot be directly perceived by the senses. But such 
signs have nothing to do with "intelligent determina- 
tion" in animals, on which the use of calls and cries is 
said "sometimes" and "probably" to depend. Once free 
from the tyrannizing influence of the theory of evolu- 
tion which postulates a priori the maintenance of such 
probabilities, it is not difficult to realize that this con- 
jecture is not only void of any solid foundation, but that 
it is positively false. If the combination of these in- 
articulate sounds with one another and with certain 
sensile states of feeling and sense perceptions, were 
really due to "intelligent determination/' animals would 
not only be endowed with something that could be com- 
pared to human speech, but with speech itself. This 
they do not possess, as Emery himself acknowledges. 

There exists a perfect parallelism, that is demanded 
by nature, between the cognitive and appetitive powers 
and their manifestation through signs which can be per- 
ceived by the senses. This parallelism is as remarkable 
in man as it is in the brute. In the stage of infancy, 
and before all use of reason, the babe manifests its 
psychic impressions and feelings by inarticulate sounds 
of oain, joy, desire and pleasure. Even adults act in a 
similar way, and in the first outburst of passion gen- 
erally give inarticulate utterance to those vehement 



114 Chapter VI. 

affections in which the activity of the sensitive appetite 
prevails. But when sober reflection 'is restored, when 
reason gains its sway and the superior appetite pre- 
dominates, the same adults manifest their psychic life 
by phonetic or graphic symbols which are properly ar- 
ranged in thought and expression. They speak or write 
a rational language according to logical and gram- 
matical rules. This parallelism clearly shows that the 
animal possesses only a sensile and not a spiritual per- 
ception and appetite, and explains why its perceptions 
and affections are never expressed by arbitrary symbols, 
but only by those immediate and natural signs which 
follow the instinctive laws of sensitive association of 
representations. Moreover many animals are forced 
by the circumstances in which they live to communicate 
their sensitive perceptions and affections to other 
sentient beings. A dog will scratch at a closed door 
and bark and whine, until it is opened. Such methods 
of communicating sensitive affections belong to the 
same class of natural signs as the mating sounds of 
animals, the chirping of crickets, the knocking of cer- 
tain beetles (Anobium), or the different melodies of 
birds. The alarm cries of certain animals against 
enemies, and the cries by which other animals of 
the same species are warned of impending dan- 
ger belong to the same category. Even the so- 
called feeler language of ants which is not immed- 
iately connected with the propagation of species or with 
individual needs of self-preservation, but subserves man- 
ifold wants of social cooperation, to an extent not met 
with in any species of higher animals, even this means 
of communication which bears the most resemblance to 



Intelligence and Speech. 115 

human speech, does not ascend above the level of im- 
mediate, natural, spontaneous and sensile signs, it is 
not determined by individual deliberation. 

It cannot be denied that all these different forms of 
"animal language" exhibit an analogon of human 
speech. Still they are essentially different. Pseudo- 
psychology may ignore this difference: scientific 
psychology must acknowledge it. Animal language is 
never the result of an intelligent reflection on the part of 
the brute to use arbitrary, fixed, sensitive signs which 
have been conventionally agreed upon as the fit ex- 
pression of psychic experiences with the view of being 
understood by other animals. It is simply the outcome 
of the laws of sensitive instinct which imply with 
physical necessity the use of a certain sound, or a cer- 
tain tap of the feelers to express and communicate a cer- 
tain sensitive affection. The language of ants pub- 
lished in our "Vergleichende Studien," offers further 
proofs of this conclusion. These remarks will, I trust, 
suffice to clear up the true relation between speech and 
intelligence. 

The question of the origin of human speech and the 
attempt to explain it by development from the natural 
vocal utterances of the higher animals, is a thorny, and 
even a hopeless chapter in the modern theory of evolu- 
tion. All the explanations of Ch. Darwin and of his 
school were so weak and frail that they immediately 
collapsed before the adverse criticism of modern lin- 
guists. 1 "I may exert my intellect as much as I like, 
and I may strain my memory as much as I like, I can- 



l ) See Giesswein, op. cit., 2d part, ch. 2, and Gutberlet, "Der 
Mensch," ch. 5. 



116 Chapter VL 

not understand, how speech should have developed from 
anything which animals possess, even if we granted 
them for this sake millions of years." Would that 
these words of Max Mueller 1 were taken into consid- 
eration by advocates of the modern theory of evolution. 

As a matter of fact, there is a vast and momentous 
difference between the so-called language of animals, 
and that of man. Even Emery admits it. And we 
fully agree with him in considering language as one of 
the principle marks which distinguish the psychic fac- 
ulties of man from those of the animal. But we go 
further and assign as the reason of this difference be- 
tween the perceptible expression of human and animal 
psychic faculties the fact that the animals have no in- 
telligence, that they have only a sensitive and not a 
spritiual life, whereas man is endowed with both. 

Let us finally proceed to compare our conclusions 
with those which Emery drew from his discussions on. 
speech and intelligence. "If," he says, "we restrict in- 
telligence to what can be accomplished by the help of 
phonetic or graphic symbols of sound, then man alone 
possesses intelligence, and animals do not. But, if we 
call intelligence the power of gathering general know- 
edge from a number of single perceptions, and of apply- 
ing it to consciously adaptive actions, then animals are 
also intelligent, although in a limited degree." We are 
very far from restricting intelligence to what can be 
accomplished by the help of phonetic or graphic sym- 
bols of speech. We still maintain our previous position, 
and characterize intelligence as the power of forming 



*) "Das Denken im Lichte der Sprache" (German edition, Leipzig, 
1888), p. 149. 



Intelligence and Speech. 117 

general concepts and conclusions out of sense percep- 
tions, and of applying them to consciously adaptive ac- 
tions, — and instinct as the principle of unconsciously 
adaptive activities in the psychic life of animals. Our 
definitions of intelligence and instinct coincide with those 
of Emery. How, then, does it come that he draws the 
very contrary conclusions? The reason is, because he 
errs in taking complex sense representations for general 
concepts, and falsely ascribes "abstractions of the first 
order" to animals. We have proved that he is wrong 
in doing so, and consequently we infer from the same 
premises the correct conclusions : that animals have no 
intelligence, not even "in a limited degree." 

And now permit me also to allude for a moment to 
the "religious point of view/' Language distinguishes 
man from the animal, but this is only an external dif- 
ference. The real difference consists in intelligence 
which is wanting to the brute. Man does not become 
man by his speech, but by his intelligence, which is the 
logical and psychological presupposition of speech. The 
breath of the Divine Spirit through which the human 
organism became a human being, is the spiritual soul 
of man. It is the natural image and likeness of God, 
which raises man, the crown of the visible creation, to 
a height far above the animal, and enables him, a sen- 
sitive-spiritual being, to link the material world to the 
spiritual in himself and in his human nature. 

Our worthy critic Mr. Emery 1 has recently raised 
some new objections to our preceding discussion. He 
summarizes them in the following propositions : 

l ) "Instinct, Intelligenz und Sprache" ("Biologisches Centralblatt," 
18 [1898], No! 1, S. 17-21). 



J 



118 Chapter VI. 

"I assert against Wasmann : 

1. "That it is very probable, though not proven, 
that animals form general (abstract) notions from their 
sense perceptions. And, as it is equally difficult to 
prove the contrary, it is not admissible to draw a sharp 
line of separation between man and animal on the 
ground of such a premature judgment." 

2. "That in certain cases animals undoubtedly per- 
form not only adaptive, but consciously adaptive ac- 
tions." 

3. "That language, as the logical employment of 
sense perceptible symbols for abstract concepts, is the 
chief characteristic mark of human intelligence. By 
language I understand the whole complex of those cere- 
bral activities which cooperate in the formation and 
employment of words and depend on definite cerebral 
structures. Language is both the product of intelligence 
and a means of furthering it." 

To these propositions I reply: 

We are not allowed to ascribe to animals higher 
psychic functions than they evidently manifest. Now, 
as even Emery himself admits, it is impossible to prove 
that animals form general concepts from their sense 
perceptions. The reason is, because all manifestations 
of their psychic life can be satisfactorily explained 
without this assumption. Therefore we are not forced 
to attribute the power of abstraction to them. This is 
not a "premature statement,"on the contrary, it is well 
founded. The probability which Emery maintains for 
the sake of suggesting the presence of such a power in 
animals is without any foundation in facts, and the in- 
terpretation of the examples which he enumerates (pp. 



Intelligence and Speech. 119 

1 8 and 19) in support of his opinion, comes from his 
error in taking general sense images for genuine ab- 
stractions, a mistake which we have abundantly refuted. 
Emery finds it very probable that a dog can perceive 
the identity of color between the green-colored bench 
and the bushes in the garden. But such a judgment 
essentially presupposes an abstract notion of the ele- 
mentary perception of "green." The dog undoubtedly 
perceives the similarity of the two green colors, because 
both of them produce a similar sense image in its sensile 
imagination. But it is contrary to all scientific prob- 
ability that it reflects on this similarity that it forms the 
general concept "green" by abstraction, and uses that 
idea for a formal judgment. Such suppositions are, to 
say the least, improbable, because the similarity of the 
respective sense images fully suffices to explain the 
actual behavior of the dog. To ascribe anything more 
to it is an arbitrary humanization of animals. Ants, 
as is known, are endowed with well developed com- 
pound eyes. They too perceive the similarity between 
their own color and that of those guests which belong 
to the so-called mimicry type. 1 For without this per- 
ception the similarity of color could not accomplish its 
biological purpose, which is to aid the guests and to be 
of profit to them. Yet, who would conclude that ants 
reflect on this resemblance and reason as follows : an 
animal that is colored similarly to ourselves must either 
be of our species or, at least, be friendly towards us; 
therefore let us favor those guests which are colored 
similarly to ourselves? Emery will probably admit 

1 ) More particulars are given in our work: "Die psychischen 
Faehigkeiten der Ameisen" ("Zoologica," Heft, 26), p. 41 ff. 



120 Chapter VI. 

that it is an unjustifiable humanization of ants, to credit 
them with the power of forming abstract notions and 
of using these notions in acts of reasoning. But why, 
then, ascribe this faculty to dogs? There is no more 
reason for doing so than in the case of ants. We can 
just as easily explain any biological facts connected with 
dog life without this assumption. 

Moreover, Emery overlooked an important point in 
our previous discussion; for we argued against the as- 
sumption of general notions in animals not only nega- 
tively, but from positive reasons. We did not only 
show, that we are not forced to ascribe a power of ab- 
straction to the dog, but that the employment of general 
notions in its subsequent activity would necessarily im- 
prove and develop its perceptive process, if it really 
possessed the power of abstraction. But such an im- 
provement is absolutely unknown. Consequently it is 
wrong of Mr. Emery to call it inadmissible to argue a 
sharp line of separation between man and brute on the 
ground of the want of general notions on the part of the 
animal. 

2. He asserted further "that in certain cases 
animals undoubtedly perform not only adaptive, but con- 
sciously adaptive actions." If "conscious adaptation" 
is taken in the sense of formal consciousness which re- 
sults from the abstract knowledge of the relation be- 
tween means and end, then the proposition is apparently 
false, because there is no power of abstraction in 
animals. The examples he has adduced (p. 19) in 
support of his assertion, prove absolutely nothing in 
favor of such a conscious adaptation. We readily 
admit that a dog scratches the door, because it wants 



Intelligence and Speech. 121 

to come in ; and we likewise admit that, on finding the 
pantry door shut, a cat tries to get in, if possible, by 
some other known entrance, because she is allured by 
the fascinating imagination of the dainties to be had in 
that apartment. However, it would be wrong to infer 
a formal, conscious adaptation in the animal from these 
facts. They are fully explained by the working of the 
sensile memory which combines in one whole the end 
in view and the means to attain it, and thus directs the 
activity of the animal to that end. The dog had often 
made the experience, — and at first merely by chance, — 
that a door gives way or opens when scratched by its 
paws; likewise the cat had often made the experience 
that dainties were to be found in a certain apartment 
and that different ways led to that room. These ex- 
amples contain nothing more than associations of several 
sensitive phantasms which are the result of experience, 
and the objects of which bear the same relation to one 
another as means to an end. But this association of 
phantasms is far from being "formal, conscious adap- 
tation." The latter does not only include the concrete 
connection between means and end, but the perception 
of their abstract relation. The first of these two ele- 
ments belongs to the sphere of sensitive instinct and is 
contained in the association of phantasms to which we 
have just referred; the latter belongs to the sphere of 
intelligent life; the first we must ascribe to animals, 
because it is necessary to explain their actions : the latter 
we must deny, because it would be an arbitrary human- 
lzation of the brute. The assumption of a formal, con- 
scious adaptation in animals is not only not demanded, 
but positively contradicted by facts. 



122 Chapter VI. 

Similar reasons to those which Emery adduces in 
favor of "conscious adaptation'' in (dogs and cats, could 
be equally well alleged for ants. When they cannot 
enter their nest by one opening, they seek another which 
is known to them; when they feel hungry, they make 
a companion who has just come home with a well filled 
stomach, feed them, and therefore tap its head with 
their feelers and stroke its sides with their forelegs. 
Indeed, when they feel hungry, many Myrmecophiles, 
especially of the genus Atemeles, imitate in a surpris- 
ing manner this habit of their hosts. 1 Such facts 
would justify the conclusion that these animals act not 
only adaptively, but also with conscious adaptation. 
Nevertheless it is now universally acknowledged that 
the sensitive instincts of ants and of their guests are 
sufficient to explain this seemingly conscious activity on 
their part. And, as pseudo-psychology is only too ready 
to humanize higher animals, we must be so much the 
more on our guard in interpreting their actions. 

3. We need not dwell on the third point of Emery's 
reply in regard to the relation between intelligence and 
language. He has expressed it more correctly than he 
formerly did by describing speech "both as a product of 
intelligence and as a means of furthering it," and he 
locates the "chief characteristic mark" of human intelli- 
gence in the possession of speech. Still he should have 
added that the power of speech in man is not only the 
result of "special cerebral structures," but chiefly the 
result of his spiritual soul. 



*) On this "active mimicry" see our paper, "Die Myrmekophilen 
and Termitophilen," Leiden, 1896 ("Compte Rendu du 3me Congres 
International de Zoologie," p. 410-440), p. 432 and ff. 



Intelligence and Speech. 123 

But Mr. Emery prefers to ignore this "mysterious 
spirit/' as he calls the human soul (p. 19), and breaks 
off all further controversy by the final declaration 
(p. 21): 

"It is to no purpose, on my part, to continue my con- 
troversy with Wasmann. The divergence of our views 
is due to a totally different conception of the world and 
of human nature. The main question, whether the 
human mind presents only a higher development of a 
disposition found in the animals, or whether, on the con- 
trary, it is something quite apart, additional, and want- 
ing in all other living beings, is far beyond the question 
of intelligence. An answer to that main question would 
determine the whole trend of science and thereby in- 
fluence its results. " 

We cannot but regret that our highly esteemed critic 
concludes with this declaration. It is true, the ques- 
tion, whether animals are endowed with intelligence or 
not, is in the last resource connected with our respective 
views on the higher questions of the universe. But this 
is the case with almost any problem of natural phi- 
losophy. An unprejudiced comparison of the facts, con- 
nected with the psychic life of animals and of man, leads 
infallibly to the conclusion that man possesses an essen- 
tially superior principle of psychic activity, a spiritual 
soul. However, we judge the facts by no means a 
priori from the standpoint of this necessary conclusion, 
as Emery imputes to us; but we infer this conclusion 
from a thorough examination of the facts. 



CHAPTER VII. 

A UNIFORM STANDARD FOR COMPARATIVE ANIMAL 
PSYCHOLOGY. 

WITHOUT entering into particulars, another critic, 
Dr. C. Smalian 1 appreciates the importance of 
exact definitions of instinct and intelligence. His psy- 
chological views are closely allied to those of H. E. Zieg- 
ler, Forel and Emery, and do not call for further discus- 
sion at our hands. Smalian believes that the so-called 
anthropine translation, the tendency of attributing the 
psychic activities of man to the animal, goes beyond 
all lawful limits, when conscious intention is assumed 
to explain any psychic phenomena in the life of ants. 
It cannot be denied that they have experimental knowl- 
edge, that they are aroused to certain actions by sensi- 
tive impulses, that they have memory images which 
reappear with the recurrence of the stimulus that 
originally gave rise to them (p. 37). So far we fully 
agree with Dr. Smalian. Although he is an adherent 
of the Darwinian theory of evolution and vigorously 
combats our deductions from the distinction between 
instinct and intelligence, he is fair enough to make the 
following acknowledgment: "Wasmann's book is a 
model of exact, scientific procedure which holds the 
fancy chained and does not allow it to go astray during 
his examination of natural phenomena" (p. 45). 



*) See his detailed account of the book, "Die zusammengesetzten 
Nester und gemischten Kolonien der Ameisen" in the "Zeitschrift fuer 
Naturwissenschaften," Vol. 67, 1894. ("Altes und Neues aus dem 
Leben der Ameisen. Oeffentlicher Vortrag, gehalten am 18. Jan., 1894, 
im Naturwissenschaftlichen Verein fuer Sachsen-Thueringen.") 

124 



Uniform Standard for Comparative Animal Psychology. 125 

In our "Vergleichende Studien ueber das Seelenle- 
ben der Ameisen und hoeheren Thiere" we shall re- 
turn to the special objections by which Smalian attempts 
to invalidate some of our facts in disproof of ant intelli- 
gence. For the present we restrict ourselves to a few 
points of universal significance and to questions of 
principle. 

Smalian thinks, as Forel did, that we require of ants 
"ratiocinations similar to the human, which they, of 
course, cannot make/' and says : "In using the term in- 
telligence, Wasmann seems constantly to think of a 
degree of that power too high for beings which are so 
widely different in organization from the highest ver- 
tebrate. In my opinion, he demands too much of ant 
intelligence." 

This objection is due to a misunderstanding. We 
do not demand, nor have we ever demanded, that intelli- 
gence in ants be equivalent in degree to that of man. 
Still the essential characteristics of intelligence must 
be met with, if the so-called intelligence of ants is to be 
considered as intelligence at all. Our critics cannot 
confute our doctrine by insinuating that we require a 
degree of intelligence in ants equivalent to that of man. 
Our only demand is that the term intelligence be not 
trifled with in an arbitrary manner by designating as 
intelligence what is no intelligence in its proper inter- 
pretation. Both Forel and Smalian use the term in a 
very loose and analogous sense, and what they call in- 
telligence is not intelligence in its right meaning. We 
all know that a resemblance or analogy is not the same 
as a difference in degree. Still the modern theory of 
evolution is very fond of passing off analogies for dif- 
ferences in degree, in order to do away in the most 



126 Chapter VII. 

convenient manner with essential differences that act- 
ually exist. Yet more than a hundred years ago we 
were warned by no less an authority than Reimarus, not 
to take mere similarities between different things for 
differences in degree of one and the same thing. It 
might be well, therefore, to draw the attention of mod- 
ern writers on the psychic life of animals once more to 
§§ 15, 16, 122 and 123 of Reimarus' "Allegemeine 
Betrachtungen," a work of undoubted psychological 
merit. We have shown in detail that human and animal 
intelligence are not identical in their nature, but merely 
analogous, and that consequently no difference in degree 
can exist between them. We have proved that any in- 
telligence, even the lowest, which is essentially identical 
with that of man, necessarily implies the power of 
formal conclusion. Consequently any intelligence in 
animals, even the lowest, must include " ratiocinations 
similar to the human/' i. e. formal judgments and gen- 
eral concepts. Therefore, he who wishes to ascribe in- 
telligence to animals, ought not to forget the exact 
meaning of the term, and should not claim intelligence 
for them and deny it in the same breath. 

Of greater importance is another objection ad- 
vanced by Mr. Smalian. (It is likewise borrowed from 
Ziegler, and was also mentioned by Forel in a somewhat 
different form). It is the following: Ants are so dif- 
ferent from higher mammals and from man in their 
whole organization, and, especially, in the structure of 
their nervous system, that their psychic faculties cannot 
be compared with those of the latter. 

These words can be taken in a twofold sense. Let 
us try to distinguish between their legitimate and their 
"wrong meaning. 



Uniform Standard for Comparative Animal Psychology. 127 

Ants are articulates, whereas mammals and man 
belong to the class of vertebrates. Now there is no true 
anatomical uniformity (homology), but only a greater 
or a less similarity (analogy) between the sense organs 
of these two classes. The most perfect sense of the 
higher vertebrates is undoubtedly that of sight Yet 
the eye of vertebrates is totally different in structure 
from that of the compound (faceted) eye of insects. 
Whilst it forms only one reverse optic image on the 
retina of each eye, there is a great divergence of opinion 
as to the optic effect of the faceted eyes of insects. The 
older theory of Joh. Mueller, which has been recently 
supported by such authorities as Exner, Grenadier, etc., 
holds that the light impressions which are received in 
the different facets combine behind the point of con- 
vergence of the crystal-cones, whose number corre- 
sponds to that of the facets, in the form of a sort of 
mosaic total perception. This is the so-called theory of 
mosaic sight. Of late, however, Claparede and Patten 
maintain that a real image of the object is formed in 
each of the crystal-cones and that all these images are 
united to one single sight perception through the com- 
bination of the different branches of visual nerves. 1 
The anatomical structure of the compound insect eye, 
which is so different from ours, easily explains the fact 
which has been proved by numerous observations, that 
the sight perfections of insects are far more sensitive 
of objects in motion than of objects in rest, and more 
susceptible for differences of color than for differences 
of shape. An interesting instance hereof is furnished 



l ) See E. Jonrdan, "Die Simie taad Sinnescrgane dev niederen 
Thiere" (1891), p, 286 & 



128 Chapter VII. 

by the striking resemblance (Mimicry) between many 
ant-guests (Lomechusa, Atemeles, etc.) and their hosts. 
It is primarily a resemblance of color, and only second- 
arily a resemblance of figure, and is far more due to 
illusive light-reflexes than to a real resemblance of 
form. 1 

Moreover there is no doubt that many insects are 
endowed with the sense of hearing. Even ants seem to 
possess it. Still it is adapted only to the perception of 
higher and finer sounds. 2 Nevertheless we have a 
very limited knowledge of the organs of this sense in 
ants. The olfactory sense is strongly developed in in- 
sects. Ants possess it in a high degree. Its primary 
organs are the feelers, whilst the variously formed 
olfactory bulbs, smell-hollows, etc., of the palpi subserve 
the same purpose in a secondary measure. The activity 
of the olfactory sense of insects is much greater than 
that of vertebrates; the more so, as, in their feelers, 3 
insects possess even a "movable nose." The setaceous 
'touch-bodies" of these feelers furnish, moreover, ex- 
cellent organs of touch. Forel appropriately called the 



*) See "Die Myrmekophilen und Termitophilen" (Leiden, 1898) 
p. 428 ff. ; also "Die psychischen Faehigkeiten der Ameisen" (Stuttgart 
1899), pp. 34-58. Mr. Lubbock has acquainted us long ago with the fact 
that ants perceive the ultra-violet rays which are invisible to us. 

2 ) See D. Sharp in: "Transactions of the Entomol. Soc. of Lon 
don" (1893), P. 2, p. 199 ft".; Ch. Janet in: "Ann, Soc. Ent. France,' 
62 (1893), 159 ss. : G .Adlerz, "Stridulationsorgan och Gudfornimmelser 
hos myror, in: Ofvers. of Kongl. Vetenskap-Akad. Forhandl" (1895) 
n. 10; /. Weir, "The ears of worms, crustaceans and ants," in: "Scien 
tific American" (April, 1898), p. 282. See also "Stimmen aus Maria- 
Laach," 40 (1891), 214 on uttering of sounds by Myrmica ruginodis and 
the sense of hearing of Formica rufa; besides see "Biolog. Centralblatt, : 
II. (1891), 26 and 13 (1893), 39. 

3 ) See "Die Fiihler der Insecten" in "Stimmen aus Maria-Laach, 
XL. (1891). 



Uniform Standard for Comparative Animal Psychology. 129 

peculiar combination of the olfactory and tactile senses 
on the feelers of ants the "smell on contact" (odeur au 
contact). The sense of taste has likewise been identi- 
fied in many insects. Ants undoubtedly possess it. It 
resides mainly in the so-called taste-buds of the tongue 
and the maxillae. Lastly, the sense of touch is well and 
variously developed in insects, and especially in ants, in 
the form of setaceous touch-bodies spread over the 
whole body, but mostly over the extremities. 

These few remarks are sufficient to show that the 
anatomical structure and the respective physiological 
activity of the sense organs of ants cannot be regarded 
as homologous but only as analogous to the structure 
and the activity of the sense organs of higher animals 
and of man. Nevertheless we can and must state that 
ants have sight perceptions, smell perceptions, taste per- 
ceptions and touch perceptions in the proper, and not 
merely in a metaphorical sense of the term. The differ- 
ence between them and the corresponding sense percep- 
tions of man is, it is true, mostly one of quality and not 
of quantity. However, a sight perception of an object 
is, and ever will be, a real and true sight perception in 
the strictest sense of the term, whether it takes place 
through the eye of a vertebrate or through a faceted 
organ of sight. The notion of "sight perception" is a 
generic term. It includes various specific notions, all 
of which contain the characters of the generic term, not 
only in an analogous or metaphorical, but in the real 
and proper sense of the word. Now, one characteristic 
element of all sight perceptions is, that the colors of an 
exterior object act through reflected light rays upon an 
Organ expressly adapted to their optic reception and 



130 Chapter VII. 

physiological transformation, and thereby convey the 
colors of the object and, in some degree, its form and 
figure to the perception of the subject whose sight or- 
gan receives them. 

What has been said of the outer organs of sense 
perception is equally applicable to the nervous system 
of ants. Let us compare it with that of the higher 
mammals and of man. The central nerve system of all 
vertebrates is a cerebro-spinal, and that of all articu- 
lates a cerebro-ventral medulla. Or, in other words, the 
position of the medullary cord is dorsal, along the back, 
in vertebrates, whilst it is ventral, along the front, in 
articulates. The brain of insects is an oesophageal 
nerve-centre, and consists of two double ganglia, one 
above and one below the oesophagus. The upper 
double ganglion is more developed and takes the place 
of the cerebrum (anterior brain) of vertebrates. This 
analogy between the cerebrum and the supra-oesoph- 
ageal ganglion of insects is the more perfect, the 
stronger the latter is developed. It displays its highest 
perfection in the "workers" of social insects, and in 
other art-loving Hymenoptera, whose supra-oesophageal 
ganglion is not only relatively large, but marked, more- 
over, by peculiarly developed parts called "peduncles" 
(corpora peduncula). Still the point at issue in 
comparative animal psychology is not so much the 
anatomical difference of the nervous system of insects 
and vertebrates, as rather its centralization and the rel- 
ative size of the brain and the supra-oesophageal gang- 
lion, in comparison to the other secondary ganglia. The 
unity of sensitive consciousness in animals is in direct 
proportion to the centralization of the nervous system; 



Uniform Standard for Comparative Animal Psychology. 131 

and the perfection of the inner senses, of the sensile 
memory, of the sensile imagination and appetite de- 
pends on the relative development of the brain. 

Now, it is undoubtedly true that the centralization 
of the nerve apparatus even of bees and ants is inferior 
to that of dogs or simians. This is particularly ap- 
plicable to the connection of the abdominal ganglia with 
one another and with those of the thorax, a connection 
which is effected only by a tender double longitudinal 
commissure. It is the probable cause of the greater 
frequency of mere reflex motions in insect life than in 
that of higher mammals ; it accounts for the less perfect 
unity of sensitive consciousness in insects, manifested 
by such facts as that of the ant which continues to 
struggle even after the loss of its abdomen, or that of 
the bumble-bee which does not cease to suck honey after 
being deprived of its abdomen, or that of a dragon- 
fly which bites off her own abdomen, when it is bent 
forward and thrust between her jaws. According to 
Ch. Janet's conscientious observations 1 one can even 
cut off the abdomen of a hornet in the act of sucking 
honey, without disturbing the occupation of the animal 
in the least. The fact that any lesion, the loss of limbs 
or of such parte of the truncus, which are more remote 
from the head, mostly causes only slight changes in 
the immediate activity of articulate animals, suggests 
that very little pain is connected with such lesions, and 
the slightness of the pain argues the imperfect unity 
of sensitive consciousness and consequently an inferior 
degree of centralization of the nervous system. 

It is true, great precaution is needed in identifying 

*) "Sur Vespa crabro" (Mem. Soc. Zool., France, 1895), p. 104. 



132 Chapter VII. 

such phenomena. One can get an angry dog to snap 
at its own leg or tail by holding them before its mouth. 
Still the dog undoubtedly feels a physiological pain 
similar to what we would feel in being injured. It is 
evidently the want of intelligence, of reflective mental 
self-consciousness that induces the dog to act so fool- 
ishly. This case has affinity with an observation I made 
on June 17, 1896, when engaged in the study of a very 
"intelligent" species of ants, the formica sanguinea. 
With a pair of pincers I put back a worker that had 
strayed from a nest under observation. Thereupon she 
tried to bite the pincers, and in doing so chanced to get 
one of her fore-legs between her jaws. On being re- 
turned to the nest, she began to fight with her own leg, 
bit it, pulled it, and even bent up her abdomen in order 
to eject poison upon the offensive member, and only 
regained her tranquility after the lapse of one or two 
minutes. Even higher animals often act in a similar 
manner in fits of rage. 

The brain of ants and of bees is relatively little 
inferior in size to that of dogs and monkeys ; and even 
years ago Ch. Darwin called attention to the physio- 
logical importance of the mighty development of the 
cephalic ganglia in the "workers" of social insects, par- 
ticularly of ants. 1 Especially remarkable is the devel- 
opment of the peduncles, 2 the foldings of which make 
them resemble the cerebral convolutions of higher ver- 
tebrates in a remarkable degree and seem to represent, 
as it were, even physiologically, the grayish matter of 
the cerebrum. According ito Vitus Graber the volume 

1 ) Darwin, "Descent of Man," I. (2d German edition), p. 125. 

2 ) See Aug. Forel, "Les fourmis de la Suisse," p, 122, ss. 



Uniform Standard for Comparative Animal Psychology. 133 

of those peduncles (which he calls "Beihirn") makes 
up no less than one half of the whole brain. If we take 
the proportion of weight to volume, we find that almost 
the same proportion exists between the weight of body 
and brain in ants, as in dogs, one of the most "in- 
telligent" species of higher animals; it varies between 
1 :200 and i :30c 

The experiments of scientists whose specialty con- 
sists in 'the anatomy and physiology of the brain, have 
proved the existence of an essential connection in ver- 
tebrates between the cerebral cortex and the power of 
association. Louis Edinger 1 maintains that "all those 
activities which can be acquired by training, and nearly 
all those which are performed by the aid of memory 
images depend on the normal condition of the cerebral 
cortex"; and that "all those mental processes which are 
termed associations are especially connected with it." 
He repeats the same statement in another work, 2 and 
says : "We know for certain that the higher mental 
functions, and particularly those of an associative nature, 
are in direct proportion to the normal condition of the 
brain-cortex." But as the power of association is, 
according to most modern physiologists, equivalent to 
"intelligence," this proportional dependence is ex- 
pressed in ithese terms : In the animal kingdom intelli- 
gence begins with the existence of a cerebral cortex, 
and with the more perfect development of the cortex 
a more perfect development of intelligence is necessarily 
connected. 



1 ) "Vorlesungen ueber den Bau der nervoesen Centralorgane des 
Menschen und der Thiere" (5. Aufl., Leipzig, 1896), S. 169. 

2 ) "Neue Studien ueber das Vorderhirn der Reptilien" (Frankfurt 
a. M- 1896). S. 6- 



134 Chapter VIL 

As we have shown in previous chapters of this essay, 
a confusion of ideas is answerable for 'these proposi- 
tions. \/The power of association is unwarrantably taken 
for intelligence. Even in man it is only the basis of 
intelligence, the essence of which is not constituted by 
associations of sense representations, but by the percep- 
tion of their mutual relations. As the brain-cortex is 
the necessary material organ of the power of associ- 
ation in vertebrates, we readily admit that an essential, 
although exterior connection exists, also in man, be- 
tween the normal condition of his brain-cortex and his 
intelligence. This fact is abundantly proved by the 
inmates of our insane asylums. Indeed, the essential 
connection between the brain-cortex and higher psychic 
activity is even interior in all other vertebrates whose 
sensitive power of association does not attain to the 
level of spiritual intelligence. Still in admitting this 
connection we warn against the danger of over-valuing 
it. Thus the brain-cortex of birds is less developed 
than that of reptiles. 1 Nevertheless, the power of as- 
sociation of many birds is not only superior to that 
of reptiles, but even of lower mammals, whose cerebral 
cortex shows a far more perfect development. 

As so much reserve is required in rating the psychic 
endowment of an animal, even a vertebrate, according 
to the thickness of the brain-cortex, the error of judg- 
ment is apparent on the part of those who transfer 
this standard from vertebrate to articulate animals, and 
maintain for instance that: "as ants have no brain- 
cortex, they cannot have a power of association : and 
that is is consequently wrong to compare their 'intelli- 



l ) See Edinger, op. cit., p. 152. 



Uniform Standard for Comparative Animal Psychology. 135 

gence' with that of vertebrates/ ' The following conclus- 
sion which is almost identical with the above, will show 
the fallacy of this mode of argumentation : "The contin- 
uation of the spinal cord within the cerebrum (medulla 
oblongata) is the most essential organ of all vital func- 
tions in vertebrates; but this continuation of the spinal 
cord is wanting in ants : consequently they have no 
vital function, and we cannot compare the vital func- 
tions of ants with those of vertebrates." This argu- 
mentation is false, because it entirely ignores the very 
important fact that the nervous system of articulates 
is built on a different anatomical plan from that of ver- 
tebrates, and that, consequently, the vegetative, as well as 
the psychic functions of articulates, depend on very dif- 
ferent central organs of the nervous system, which are 
merely analogous to those of vertebrates, although they 
fulfil the same biological purpose. Edinger himself 
has proved that the nerve-centers of articulates are the 
organic foundation and condition of psychic association. 
In examining the anatomical structure of the first ab- 
dominal ganglion of a crawfish he pointed to the 
nerve-cells joined together by various filaments, and 
exclaimed : "How many possibilities of association are 
furnished by this single ganglion I" 1 Yet the brain 
of an ant is the central organ of a nervous system far 
more perfect than a ganglion in the abdomen of a craw- 
fish! Why then, deny to ants the psychic power of 
association "for anatomical reasons"? If the lack of 
a cerebral cortex like that of vertebrates were a reason 



l ) Op. cit., p. 28. Whether the ganglion-cells or the fibrillar tissues 
are regarded as the organs of nervous activity, is of no importance in 
our present discussion. 



136 Chapter VII. 

for doing so, the normal vital activities of the ant ought 
to be just as "brainless/' as altogether awkward, as 
the actions of a higher vertebrate would be, that had 
been deprived of its cerebral cortex by artificial am- 
putation. But this conclusion is an apparent contra- 
diction to biological facts. Therefore the argumenta- 
tion on which it rests is likewise untenable. 

Perhaps science will some day succeed in investi- 
gating the anatomy and physiology of the insect-brain 
as accurately as it has investigated the brain of ver- 
tebrates. The difficulty is of course immense on 
account of the minute proportions of the object under 
examination. In the mean time the following consid- 
erations must serve as a sufficient safeguide in com- 
paring vertebrate with articulate animals. It is an in- 
contestable fact, that many insects and especially ants 
have a sensitive power of association which suitably 
guides the exercise of their instincts, and which is 
modified in many ways by individual experience. In 
our different works 1 we have furnished much evidence 
in proof of this fact. Moreover the anatomical dis- 
covery of the far more perfect development of the so- 
called by-brain, the peduncles of ants and of other 
insects whose psychic capabilities surpass those of 
insects of inferior psychic endowment, is in perfect 
harmony with the above-mentioned psychological fact. 
Hence we may conclude with much probability, that 
there is a similar connection between the "by-brain" 



l ) Especially in the "Vergleichende Studien ueber das Seelenleben 
der Ameisen und hoeheren Thiere" (1. Aufl., Freiburg, 1897), and in 
our recent work, "Die psychischen Faehigkeiten der Ameisen" (Stutt- 
gart, 1899). 



Uniform Standard for Comparative Animal Psychology. 137 

and the associate power of insects, as between the brain- 
cortex and the associate power of vertebrates. And 
thus, I think, the objections made against our argu- 
mentation by modern brain-anatomists have been suffi- 
ciently discussed and refuted. 

Consequently the comparative morphology and an- 
atomy of the nervous system justify the application 
of a uniform standard to the psychic activities of 
articulate as well as of vertebrate animals. Even the 
mere zoological standpoint permits us to exact almost 
as much from the sensile cognition and appetite of ants, 
as from the same faculties of dogs. And as modern 
animal psychology terms this essentially sensitive asso- 
ciative power the "intelligence" of animals, we are 
equally entitled to apply the same critical standard to 
the "intelligence" of ants and of higher mammals. 

But before we test this conclusion we must prevent 
a misunderstanding which might arise from speaking 
of the "unity of the sensitive consciousness in animals." 
It is nothing unusual on the part of modern psychol- 
ogists to identify sensitive consciousness with spiritual 
self-consciousness and with consciousness of the end. 
Yet, these two psychological concepts are entirely dif- 
ferent, as will appear from the following analysis. 

Any sense perception, indeed any "perception," in- 
cludes, as a secondary element, a cognition of the 
impression which the object makes upon the sensitive 
condition of the agent. We call this latter element 
"apperception." These apperceptions are not unfre- 
quently more vivid in animals than the perceptions 
themselves. This arises from the fact, that the sub- 
jective element generally predominates over the ob- 



188 Chapter VII. 

jective in the cognitive process of animals. The reason 
for this fact is to be found in the end and purpose 
of sense perceptions in animal life. It is to represent 
to the animal's sensitive nature as subjectively agreeable 
what is objectively suitable for the preservation of the 
species, and, for the fulfilment of its natural destination ; 
and to represent as subjectively disagreeable whatever 
is objectively injurious. This result is obtained by ap- 
perception; for the suitable disposition of the sensitive 
powers of cognition and appetite — which we call in- 
stinct — causes the perception of useful and convenient 
objects to make an impression which is sensually 
agreeable to the animal, and the perception of noxious 
objects a disagreeable impression upon its sensitive 
appetite. In man, however, whose sense perceptions 
primarily subserve a higher spiritual cognition, the ob- 
jective element prevails under normal conditions over 
the subjective impression, even in his sense perceptions. 
Daily experience enables us to observe this fact. When 
we are in a bad humor we view everything through a 
"smoked glass," because our subjective condition is 
abnormal and diseased. Still the apperception, or the 
subjective element of perceptions is, generally speaking, 
subordinate in man to their objective element. But in 
animals the very contrary happens, because the purpose. 
of their sensile power of perception demands it. Even 
under normal conditions the subjective impression pre- 
vails over the objective contents of the representation. 
The sensitive consciousness of the animal is due to 
apperception; indeed it is identical with the latter in its 
activity. For the sensitive power of perception is un- 
able to distinguish between the objective and the sub- 



Uniform Standard for Comparative Animal Psychology. 139 

jective elements of sense perceptions. Intelligence alone 
can thus discriminate. By virtue of his intelligence and 
free will, man is able to free himself from the im- 
pression which objects make upon him. His spiritual 
nature enables him to disregard it. He is not forced 
to follow the sensitive impressions of his good or bad 
humor, and when he does, he acts unreasonably; he 
follows the animal, not the human side of his nature. 
Intelligence, and it alone, is able to discover the true 
relations which exist between the object and the sub- 
ject, and again between the subject and its activities, 
and is able to reflect on them. It alone compares them, 
one with the other, draws conclusions from them, and 
is thereby raised to self -consciousness and adaptive 
activity. Reason alone, this mental "introspection," 
renders self-consciousness and consciousness of the end 
possible. Hence man alone truly and properly appre- 
hends himself as the uniform subject of his different 
perceptions, affections and actions. The animal does 
not; because it cannot reflect. It perceives the actual 
unity of its sensitive nature only in as far as it experi- 
ences by way of apperception the actual connection of 
certain sensitive impulses with certain exterior sense 
impressions. This connection determines the activity 
of the animal with necessity; because the latter is un- 
able to make it the object of intelligent reflection. 
Pseudo-psychology, of course, regularly confounds the 
sensitive consciousness of the animal with mental self- 
consciousness and the consciousness of intention in hu- 
man beings. However, this confusion hinders a clear 
analysis of psychological phenomena, and must be dis- 
carded as unscientific. These remarks may suffice to 



140 Chapter VI L 

explain the so-called "unity of the sensitive conscious- 
ness" in animals. 

We have seen that a uniform, critical standard in 
comparative animal psychology exists, and must exist 
in spite of the anatomical difference between the sense 
organs and the nervous systems of ants and of the 
higher vertebrates. The development of the organs 
of sense perception and of the central nervous system 
in ants is such, that it can well stand the comparison 
with the development of the sense organs in mammals. 
The sense perceptions of ants are true and proper sense 
perceptions, no less than those of dogs, monkeys and 
even of man. Furthermore, the relative perfection of 
the principal parts of the central nervous system of ants 
is well proportioned to a highly developed interior sen- 
sitive power of perception. Indeed from an anatomical 
point of view the latter may be inferred with certainty. 
And as this sensitive power of perception is nothing 
else than the mis-named "intelligence" of modern ani- 
mal psychology, we have given the proof, that no solid 
argument can be advanced from an anatomical stand- 
point against a comparison of ant-intelligence with mon- 
key, or even with human intelligence. If any of our 
modern opponents succeed in proving that the anatom- 
ical structure of the ant-brain a priori excludes all 
intelligence in the true sense of the term, we would be 
deeply indebted to him. Meanwhile we are convinced 
that such a proof is impossible. The question whether 
ants have intelligence or not, is, and finally ever will be 
a psychological and not an anatomical question. For its 
legitimate solution we may and must even apply the 
same standard of a critical psychological analysis, as foi 



Uniform Standard for Comparative Animal Psychology. 141 

the solution of the other question, whether dogs, ele- 
phants or monkeys are endowed with intelligence or not. 
If then some of our opponents deny the legitimacy 
of a comparison between the intelligence of insects and 
that of higher vertebrates on the pretext that they "rep- 
resent totally different branches of the great trunk of 
the animal kingdom/' 1 it looks very much like trying 
to shirk a clear analysis of psychological concepts. But 
we insist on equal rights for the psychological criticism 
of all sensitive beings, and we must apply to each and 
all of them the same critical principles. Psychic activi- 
ties which are dubbed intelligent in the case of dogs 
or monkeys, can and must be called intelligent in the 
case of ants, despite the anatomical difference between 
the eyes of ants and monkeys, or between the formation 
of their brains. We must necessarily use the same 
psychological standard in judging the actions of ants 
who post sentinels, in order to guard themselves against 
sudden hostile attacks, as we apply to monkeys who do 
exactly the same, when they are about to pillage a 
banana-grove. Anatomical reasons will never justify 
anyone in dubbing one and the same action "intelli- 
gent," when performed by monkeys, and "instinctive" 
when performed by ants. The psychic manifestation on 
the part of the dog that meets a dreaded rival, growls, 
shows its teeth and gets out of the way, is fully equiva- 
lent to that of the ant which chances to run against a 
warrior of a hostile camp, opens her jaws in a menacing 
manner and sneaks away from the combat. The small 



l ) Ziegler, "Naturwissenschaft und socialdemokratische Theorie" 
(1893), p. 186. Smalian, op. cit., p. 39. Forel, "Gehirn und Seele," 
pp. 28 and 29. 



142 Chapter VII. 

size of the ant does not justify us in applying a dif- 
ferent standard to her psychic faculties. Nor does the 
anatomical difference of sense organs or nervous sys- 
tems in dogs and ants entitle us to do so ; for the gist of 
the question in estimating the psychic import of an ani- 
mal's action is not so much which organic instruments 
are called into play, as rather how they are employed. 

Smalian quotes a sentence from Darwin's "Origin of 
Species/' 1 in which this author sketches the difference 
between the psychic activities of ants and those of man : 
"Ants work by inherited instincts and by inherited or- 
gans or tools, whilst man works by acquired knowledge 
and manufactured instruments." And Smalian con- 
tinues : "This difference cannot be emphasized too much : 
the activities adapted to the preservation of an ant- 
colony result from necessity , those of man, however, 
from free will." These are very gratifying and correct 
concessions. But we call attention to the fact that they 
reach much further than Darwin, Ziegler and Smalian 
are inclined to think. For the very same difference 
which raises a psychological barrier between ants and 
man, necessarily distinguishes dogs and monkeys from 
the human species. They, too, work only with their in- 
stincts, with natural organs and instruments ; no dog or 
monkey ever works with an artificially manufactured 
implement. Ants, as well as higher vertebrates, are able 
to employ acquired individual sense perceptions in order 
to perfect their natural instincts, and many instances will 
be adduced in my last chapter in support of this plea. 
Let one instance suffice for the present. I had a nest of 
Formica sanguinea under observation, and kept it for 



l ) "Origin of Species," p. 362, 1, 6 and last English edition. 



Uniform Standard for Comparative Animal Psychology. 143 

many years in my room. Desiring to disaccustom the 
ants from emerging through a certain opening of the 
nest and falling upon a table from which it was difficult 
for them to find the way home, I only had to grasp with 
my pincers a number of ants, which happened to be out- 
side, dip them into water and put them back, wet as they 
were, into the nest. I could then be pretty sure that not 
one of the several hundred ants of this colony would 
dare to leave the nest for one or more days through the 
dangerous opening. This fact proves that ants are un- 
doubtedly able to make use of sensitive experiences, and 
to communicate them to others of their species : indeed, 
we do not find more "intelligence" even among higher 
vertebrates. He who says that in such cases ants per- 
form unconsciously adaptive actions, whilst similar ac- 
tions of monkeys are consciously adaptive, makes an 
arbitrary assumption that is not warranted by any reason 
or argument. From equal effects we can and we must 
infer equal causes. Consequently both ants and mon- 
keys act only instinctively, or both of them perform in- 
telligent actions. There is no other possible medium. 

It is, therefore, an unwarrantable inconsistency to 
abandon the intelligence of ants, in order to save that of 
the higher mammals. He who, w r ith Ziegler, Smalian 
and almost all modern animal psychologists styles all 
those actions intelligent, which are due to the individual 
experience of the animal, involves himself in an obvious 
contradiction, by attributing "intelligence" only to higher 
mammals and not to ants and other insects. For this 
pretended intelligence is nothing more than the natural 
exercise of innate instincts, by means of individual sense 
perceptions. And for this reason all animals have more 



144 Chapter VII. 

or less intelligence according to this modern definition; 
but most of all those which, like ants, have highly de- 
veloped instincts. Darwin was far more consistent than 
many a recent zoologist, when he wrote in his "Descent 
of Man" -} "Those insects which possess the most won- 
derful instincts are certainly the most intelligent/' 

But did not Mr. Alb. Bethe in his recent work that 
has been so widely spoken of, 2 prove that ants have 
no "psychic qualities" whatsoever, and that in conse- 
quence a far wider gap exists between them and the 
higher vertebrates, than between these and man? 
Bethe's essay relates, indeed, many clever experiments 
with ants and bees, it is of undoubted scientific merit 
compared with many pseudo-psychological treatises 
which humanize ants, it even helps to prove our state- 
ment that ants are not a sort of intelligent human beings 
in miniature. For these achievements we owe Mr. 
Bethe a debt of gratitude. But we regret so much the 
more that he went to the opposite extreme and tried to 
transform the ant into a mere reflex-mechanism, devoid 
of all sensitive cognition and feeling. We have else- 
where examined Bethe's reflex-theory in detail, 3 and 
in disproof of his views on the psychic faculties of ants 
and of higher animals, we have instanced many new 
facts from our own observation in a larger work, 4 



!) Op. cit., 1, p. 37. 

2 ) "Duerfen wir den Ameisen und Bienen psychische Qualitaeten 
zuschreiben"? ("Archiv fuer die gesammte Physiologie," 70 [1898], 
15-100.) 

3 ) "Eine neue Reflextheorie des Ameisenlebens" (""Biologisches 
Centralblatt," 18, 1898, No. 15, S. 577-588). 

4 ) "Die psychischen Faehigkeiten der Ameisen" ("Zoologica Heft/' 
26, Stuttgart, 1899), 134 S. Folio with 3 plates. 



Uniform Standard for Comparative Animal Psychology. 145 

which was called forth by his essay. Hence a brief 
notice of it is sufficient for our present argument. 

The fundamental principle in Bethe's psychological 
essay is that all activities of animals, which have "not 
been learned" are mere reflex actions, and that it is un- 
lawful to speak of psychic qualities, unless the animal 
be able to modify its inherited activities by individual 
experience. 1 This arbitrary principle changes all ac- 
tivities hitherto regarded as instinctive in the strict 
sense of the term into reflex action, and eliminates 
from the sphere of psychic functions the sensi- 
tive feelings and cognitions which guide them. 
Bethe tries to justify his novel procedure by 
stating that these psychic qualities fulfil their pur- 
pose only when they enable the animal to modify its 
activity by individual experience. But is not the first 
and primary end of sensitive feeling and perception 
the immediate and present welfare of the animal by 
enabling it to seek suitable, and avoid injurious 
objects, the former of which they represent as agreeable 
and the latter as unpleasant, while they simultaneously 
guide the performance of the respective activity in a 
suitable manner ? It is only as a secondary purpose that 
they are the means of gathering experimental knowl- 



l ) The same fundamental principle is maintained by Dr. Jacques 
Loeb, professor at the University of Chicago, in his book "Einleitung 
in die vergleichende Gehirnphysiologie und vergleichende Psychologie, 
mit besonderer Beruecksichtigung der wirbellosen Thiere" (Leipzig, 
1899). The refutation of Bethe's views contains a refutation of Loeb. 
Loeb's mechanical explanation of instinct has been critically examined 
in the following essays: "Einige Bemerkungen zur vergleichenden 
psychologie und Sinnesphysiologie" ("Biolog. Centralblatt, 1900, n. 10, 
pp. 341-348), and "Zur mechanischen Instincttheorie" ("Stimmen aus 
Maria-Laach," Freiburg i. B. 1901, Heft, 1 und 2). 



Hti Chapter VII. 

edge, and thus enabling the animal to modify its sub- 
sequent mode of action. The very fundamental princi- 
ple of Bethe's new reflex-theory is erroneous ; and for 
this reason we cannot admit the structure which he has 
built upon it. His constantly recurring argument, that 
such and such an activity of ants and bees has not been 
learnt, and must consequently be regarded as a mere 
reflex activity, proves absolutely nothing. 

In applying his reflex-theory to the life of ants Bethe 
has unfortunately altogether overlooked the psychic ele- 
ment of the activities which he mentions. Moreover 
he simply denies facts that escaped his personal obser- 
vation, or which did not seem to fit into his system. 
Thus he denies the power of communication (p. 65), 
or, at most, admits its possibility in the marauding ex- 
peditions of the so-called slave-making species. Never- 
theless the existence of this mutual communication 
which is accomplished by taps of the feelers has been 
previously demonstrated in many other happenings of 
ant life. That ants frequently modify their actions 
through individual experiences, as when they grow 
familiar with new genuine guests, and learn to treat 
as enemies guests which had been previously tolerated 
with indifference, and even to seize and kill them, — 
such facts as these are all unknown to Mr. Bethe, 
although scientific literature furnished abundant ma- 
terial in proof of their existence. He even appeals to 
my own writings in support of his statement that no 
single fact clearly demonstrates the existence of 
"psychic qualities in ants" (p. 69). Verily, this appeal 
cannot be understood except for his error in taking 
sensitive perception for intelligence. 



Uniform Standard for Comparative Animal Psychology. 147 

Whilst Bethe regards ants as "reflex mechanisms" 
without sensitive feeling and cognition, he tries to raise 
the psychic endowment of higher animals nearer to that 
of man. Thus he affirms (p. 69) that: "The dog and 
the monkey must first learn everything in the same way 
as man does"; whilst he had just stated that the natural 
disposition of the ant contains everything that she does 
in her lifetime." We shall dwell upon both statements 
more closely in the following chapter in which we treat 
on the different methods of acquiring knowledge. Still 
wc wish to point out the consequences that would fol- 
low from the consistent application of Bethe's reflex- 
theory not only — as he would prefer — to non-vertebrate, 
but also to vertebrate animals. 

If we lay down the principle with Bethe and Loeb 
that "what is not learned, must pass for reflex ac- 
tivity," we must conclude that all hereditary instincts, 
and all those sensitive feelings, perceptions and imagin- 
ations, which govern the exercise of these instincts in 
higher animals, are necessarily mere reflex phenomena. 
But as the so-called intelligence of animals is nothing 
more than the combination of different sense percep- 
tions and acts of the imagination, subject to the heredi- 
tary laws of association, and mediated by individual 
experience, we must consistently maintain that it is also 
a mere reflex, though perhaps more complicated ac- 
tivity. What would then be left of the psychic life 
of animals but a "complicated reflex mechanism" that 
is capable of analysis? The whole animal kingdom 
would be reduced once more to the famous animal 
mechanisms of the Cartesian school. 

Therefore it cannot be denied that there is a uniform 



148 Chapter VII. 

standard in comparative animal psychology; for the 
attempt to judge the psychic activities of non- vertebrate 
animals according to a standard a priori different from 
Jhat applied to higher vertebrates, has proved a signal 
failure. Bethe pretends (p. 69), that we demand a 
uniform and consistent standard of discrimination for 
the psychic life of all animals only, "because he (Was- 
mann) must prove, that ants do not essentially differ in 
their vital activities from higher vertebrates, and be- 
cause he fears lest the final issue of his researches would 
lead him to admit a progressive development of psychic 
qualities, which places the human being, not in a cate- 
gory of his own and different from animals, but only 
in the highest grade of a long chain of beings subject 
to the laws of evolution." However, in our opinion 
the only question is not what we must prove according 
to Bethe's fancies, but what we have actually demon- 
strated on the ground of existing facts. Our exposi- 
tions are not refuted by mere appeals to modern 



l ) See also the Introduction to Bethe's paper, p, 16. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

ON THE DIFFERENT FORMS OF ACQUIRING KNOWLEDGE. 1 

MODERN animal psychology establishes the ac- 
quirement of knowledge as the criterion of intel- 
ligence in contradistinction to instinct, or, as we shall 
hereafter briefly call it, the power of learning, in the 
widest sense of the term. We have already shown in 
detail that by no means every modification of instinct 
acquired by the individual is the result of intelligence. 
But in order to understand the true value of this criter- 
ion, we ask, what is meant by "learning" ? We must try 
to analyze and separate the different notions that are 
commonly connected with the word, and too frequently 
confounded with one another. It will soon become 
apparent which kind of "learning" furnishes an argu- 
ment for intelligence and which does not. In conduct- 
ing this investigation we shall not be influenced by any 
philosophical system, and be guided solely by the natural 
explanation of biological facts. 

Well established facts in the psychic life of man 
and animals manifest six different ways or "forms," of 
learning: three forms of learning by one's self, and 
three of learning by foreign influence. 

i. The first form of learning is met with in those 
abilities which are acquired by the mere exercise of 
reflex motions. It is due to hereditary reflex mech- 



x ) A more detailed discussion of this subject will be found in "Die 
psychischen FaehigKeiten der Ameisen" (Zoologica, Heft 26, 1899), 
pp. 82-114. 

149 



150 Chapter VIII. 

anism, and has nothing to do with intelligence. Under 
this heading falls, for instance, the manner in which 
ants and higher animals "learn to walk" ; indeed, heredi- 
tary reflex mechanism is the most essential and the 
principle element of learning even for a child that be- 
gins to take its first steps. -The motions of walking 
are, as such, reflex activities. It is true that nerve- 
and muscle-mechanisms work more perfectly and 
quicker through practice. But this does not result 
from the sensitive experience of the animal or of man, 
but from the increased mechanical and physiological 
functional power of the respective reflex mechanism 
which is due to exercise. Still one psychic element 
comes into play. The animal as well as man has an 
instinctive impulse to use its motory mechanism. This 
impulse includes the psychic element of so-called mus- 
cular sensations; and as these muscular sensations 
actuate the instinctive impulse, the whole process 
cannot well be called a mere reflex activity. 
Moreover, if the motion is occasioned by the 
sense perception of some exterior object which the 
animal approaches or avoids, the psychic elements 
of sensitive cognition and appetite come into play like- 
wise ; and man on coming to the use of reason is often 
guided in his motions, as experience confirms, by in- 
telligent knowledge, or an intelligent intention. But 
we have no valid reasons to ascribe the latter motives 
to animals; nor has anyone ever thought of tracing 
back the art of "learning how to walk" to intelligence, 
either in animals or in man. On the other hand the 
instinctive practice of walking is much more dependent 
on foreign influence in man than it is in animals. At 



On the Different Forms of Acquiring Knowledge. 151 

the very most the instinct of imitation cooperates in 
the latter by the impulse which it imparts ; and this 
influence belongs to the fourth form with which we 
shall become acquainted later on. But an infant must 
be guided by the hands of another person, or else it 
will take a long time in learning to walk. This never 
occurs with animals. It has never been observed in 
ant colonies or in herds of monkeys, that the young 
were guided by their mothers' hands in order to be 
taught the art of walking. 

But all these elements are of secondary moment in 
man and animals, compared with the chief .and most 
essential element in acquiring this art. It is the lowest 
and simplest form of learning, the exercise of reflex 
motions, which has its origin in instinctive impulse and 
is actuated by muscular sensations. Young lambs frisk 
about, because they are stimulated by their muscular 
sensations, and thus they learn to move all the quicker 
and steadier. The play of pups and kittens is naturally 
explained in the same manner, as well as the gambols 
of ants which cluster together on the surface of the 
nest, when the first warm rays of the sun shine upon 
them in early spring. 1 

2. The second form of learning occurs when a new 
line of action is acquired by the independent, sensitive 
experience of the individual. It is universally recog- 
nized that this form of learning is not unusual in man. 
But it is also very common with higher as well as lower 
animals. Thus in investigating the "international 
relations" which exist between Lomechusa, Atemeles, 



l ) See our "Yefglekhende Studien" (1st edition), p. 42, 



152 Chapter VIII. 

Claviger, etc., and their hosts, I have met with instances 
of this second form of learning in the manner in which 
these ants become acquainted with their new guests. 
At first they are provoked to make an hostile attack 
upon the beetle on account of its strange shape and un- 
wonted odor. But on chancing to touch its yellow hair- 
tufts with their mouths, they make the agreeable ex- 
perience of licking something highly aromatic, and 
change their hostile attitude into a friendly disposition 
often within a few minutes. In future they do not 
experience any hostile reaction through the odor and 
shape of the new guest, but tend and feed it, so that 
other individuals of the same species of beetle, which 
are subsequently put into the nest, are immediately ad- 
mitted into the community, even though the odor of a 
strange species of ant may still adhere to them. We 
can explain this phenomenon only by saying, that the 
soothing experience made with the first beetle aroused a 
new association of representations in the sensitive pow- 
ers of the ants, in virtue of which the second beetle 
made at once a very different impression on them, from 
that which was caused by its predecessor at their first 
encounter. 

Another observation, that I made with this nest of 
Formica sanguinea, belongs undoubtedly to the same 
class of biological phenomena. A Dinarda dentata had 
been for some time a tolerated, if not a welcome guest 
of the community. But on account of experiences with 
a closely allied, but little larger species, the Dinarda 
Maerkeli, 1 toleration turned into a hostile attitude. 



*) See "Vergleichende Studien" (1st edition), p. 38; "Die psychi- 
schen Faehigkeiten der Ameisen," p. 84. 



On the Different Forms of Acquiring Knowledge. 153 

The ants learned to attack, and to seize and kill their 
former guest. Now in this case a new psychic element, 
beyond the independent learning of the individual, evi- 
dently influenced the conduct of these ants. It was 
the stimulation of their imitative instincts, which was 
brought about by the behavior of their companions. 
We shall study this element more closely in the discus- 
sion of the fourth form of learning. 

It need not be particularly mentioned that the sec- 
ond form of learning is also met with in higher animals. 
By its individual sensitive experience a hunting dog 
"learns to recognize" a new species of game which will 
in future be chased with special eagerness, whenever it 
is scented. But it is time to take up the question, 
whether this second form of learning furnishes a proof 
of animal intelligence. 

A disciple of pseudo-psychology will naturally feel 
inclined to attribute the power of logical deduction to an 
an ant, that after a single experience admits a new, 
hitherto unknown, but genuine guest, let us say the 
Atemeles, into her nest. He injects his own thoughts 
into the ant's brain, and lets Formica reason as fol- 
lows : "On account of its unwonted odor I at first took 
that strange creature for a hostile being, or for a 
Didelphys which it was my duty to devour; but, after 
all, I experienced a very pleasant sensation in licking it. 
Besides, it behaved exactly as a friendly ant would do, 
and tapped me gently with its feelers. I guess, it will 
be best to treat it as a welcome immigrant and admit it 
with citizenship papers into our community." 

What an arbitrary humanization of the animal ! The 
facts which evidently belong to the second form of 



154 Chapter VIII. 

learning prove that the animal is able to form new 
associations of representations from its own sense ex- 
periences. This they do prove and nothing more. But 
this ability results from sensile memory and not from 
intelligence. And only the most uncritical confusion 
of these two concepts can make it possible to propose 
this second form of independent learning as a proof of 
intelligence in animals. 

3. The third form of learning occurs, when a new 
mode of action cannot possibly be explained unless we 
admit personal conclusions from former experiences and 
past conditions to the new state of affairs. This mode 
of learning furnishes a real argument in favor of in- 
telligence; for the second form with its new associations 
of representations, which flow immediately from sensi- 
tive experience, is totally inadequate to explain the 
phenomenon. An additional and essentially higher 
element cooperates. It is the intelligent comparison of 
former conditions with the new state of affairs and the 
conclusions which flow from this comparison. This 
mode of learning necessarily implies the faculty of per- 
ceiving the true relations between cause and effect, 
between means and end. Consequently it presupposes 
intelligence in the true and proper sense of the term. 
Therefore we must examine very closely, whether 
a form of learning which evidently implies an operation 
of intellectual faculties, can be truly met with in ants 
or in higher animals ; and it depends on the result of 
this investigation, whether or ifct we may legitimately 
call them intelligent. 

We have previously shown in many of our publica- 



On the Different Forms of Acquiring Knowledge. 155 

tions, 1 that ants lack the power of intellectual reason- 
ing. Not only are there no facts which cannot fully 
be accounted for without attributing this power to them, 
but, on the contrary, there are many facts which are 
incompatible with such an assumption. The firm at- 
tachment of the "slaves," developed out of robbed 
pupae, to the ants which stole them; the inability of 
all ants to apply their architectural skill intellectually 
to new purposes, as to the building of a bridge in order 
to obtain honey; the constant and diligent rearing of 
the Lomechusa larvae in spite of the great damage the 
ants have subsequently to suffer from this ravenous 
brood, — these and many other phenomena tell forcibly 
against the assumption of intelligent reasoning in ants. 
Nor is this psychic factor less wanting in higher ani- 
mals. 2 Living, as they do, in the wide garden of 
nature, monkeys have never learned the use of fire 
during the past thousands of years ; despite innumer- 
able chance-experiences they have not even learned to 
employ stones or branches of trees as weapons of attack 
or defence; even higher animals manifest in their in- 
stincts of adoption features quite as unreasonable, as is 
the rearing of the Lomechusa by ants. 

Thus we meet with the same mysterious contradic- 
tions in the habits of ants as of higher animals. On 



1 ) Especially in our book: "Die zusammengesetzten Xester und 
gemischten Kolonien der Ameisen" (Muenster, 1891), 3 Abschnitt, I. 
Kap; then in our "Vergleichende Studien . . . ," above all in the chapter? • 
"1st die Bauthaetigkeit der Ameisen durch Intelligenz geleitet?" and 
"Die Adoptionsinstincte im Thierreich." 

2 ) Compare the above mentioned chapters in the "Vergleichende 
Studien" and the chapter "Kriege und Sklavenraub im Thierreich." See 
also our essay; "Die psychischen Faehigkeiten der Ameisen," p, 92, 



156 Chapter VIII. 

the one hand they are able to learn by independent 
sense experience, and thus develop, or modify their 
hereditary instincts within certain limits; and, on the 
other, they are unable to learn from agreeable or 
disagreeable experiences, however frequently the latter 
may occur. What is the solution of this riddle? It 
can be found only by insisting on the precise distinc- 
tion which prevails between the second and the third 
forms of learning. The animal is able to learn without 
foreign help, whenever the new associations of repre- 
sentations which flow immediately from sense experi- 
ence and do not demand reflection, are sufficient in 
themselves to modify its mode of action ; but, whenever 
an intellectual power of inferring new conditions from 
the past is requisite for that purpose, the animal is not 
able to learn the least thing without foreign assistance. 
In other words : The power of learning is limited in 
animals to their sensile memory; it fails entirely, where 
intelligence ought to set in, that noble psychic faculty 
which carries man constantly onward on the path of 
progress. Consequently the essential difference between 
the powers of learning in animals and in man must be 
sought in the third form of acquiring knowledge. It 
is as characteristic of the latter, as it is lacking to the 
former. The next three forms deal with the modes of 
learning by foreign influence. 

4. The fourth form is that of learning by instinct- 
ively imitating the behavior of surrounding beings. It 
is the lowest stage of learning by foreign influence. As 
the first form of independent learning is closely con- 
nected with reflex processes, whence it proceeds to real 
psychic activities, so it is with this form of learning by 



On the Different Forms of Acquiring Knowledge. 157 

instinctive imitation. When any member of a social 
gathering chances to yawn, his action is "spontane- 
ously," or, may be, reflexively imitated by those who 
see it. The perception of his motion actuates a similar 
reflex activity on their part. The simplest instinctive 
imitations of animals may be explained in this manner. 
The psychic element of sight perception serves as the 
releasing moment. The less, however, the activity 
which is imitated be purely reflex, as it is in yawning, 
the more will psychic elements participate in the imita- 
tion. Hence we are fully justified in speaking of 
"learning by imitation/' 

It may be anticipated that this form of learning is 
prominent in animals of social habits. We find, in- 
deed, many instances of it in ant life. The above men- 
tioned attacks upon the Dinarda, that occurred in the 
nests I had under observation, and especially in one 
large nest 1 of Formica sanguinea, in which several 
kinds of slaves were kept, clearly manifests the in- 
fluence of this instinct of imitation. When one or a 
few ants commenced to pursue the Dinarda which met 
them, their example soon proved so catching, that many 
of the others, masters as well as slaves, that had not 
happened to meet the unfortunate beetle, or had even 
previously ignored it, began to hustle and search for the 
intruder. 2 

This mode of learning by imitation can be still better 
observed, when ant colonies and particularly mixed col- 
onies of Formica sanguinea receive genuine guests into 



1 ) A cut of which is given in the "Vergleichende Studien" (1. 
Aufl., p. 15). 

2 ) See "Die psychischen Faehkeiten der Ameisen," p. 93 ff. 



158 Chapter VIII. 

the community. The beetle Atemeles emarginatus was 
always amicably received, when one or the other of the 
following conditions was verified. Either a number of 
fusca had to be kept as slaves in the colony, or I had to 
isolate a few of the sanguinea in a little glass, to quar- 
antine them for some days with the new guest, before 
introducing him to the company of the other ants. In 
the first case the fusca received the beetle, and intro- 
duced him to the sanguinea; in the latter case he was 
introduced by the sanguinea which had allowed him to 
approach and touch them during the period of isolation, 
and had finally licked his aromatic secretions. I found 
out by experiments that it is not only the odor of the 
salivary gland-secretions of their companions which in- 
duces the ants to grant permanent admission into the 
colony to the beetle which has been licked by one of 
their number, but that it is a genuine instance of learn- 
ing by imitation. 1 The same happened in the admis- 
sion given to an Atemeles emarginatus by a mixed col- 
ony of Formica pratensis and F. Fusca, in which case 
the former learned by the example of the latter, how 
to treat the beetle. 2 

The great importance of the social instinct for com- 
munities of ants follows from the fact that their sensile 
power of communication, their so-called feeler lan- 
guage, would be purposeless without it. 3 For the re- 
sult of tapping one another's heads consists principally 



1 ) "Die psychischen Faehigkeiten der Ameisen," p. 96 ft". 

2 ) "Die zusammengesetzten Nester und gemischten Kolonien der 
Ameisen," p. 174. "Die psych. Faehigkeiten . . . ," pp. 99 and 100. 

3 ) See "Vergleichende Studien" (jl. Aufl.), p. 10 and "Die psychi- 
schen Faehigkeiten der Ameisen," pp. 59-73 and 100. 



On the Different Forms of Acquiring Knowledge. 159 

and primarily in arousing attention and thereby in- 
ducing the other to follow, or to take part in a given 
enterprise. 

The importance of the instinct of imitation in the 
psychic life of animals is universally recognized. A 
dog is seldom heard to bark alone : his canine acquaint- 
ances in the neighborhood cheerfully chime in at the 
first sound of his voice. Through its instinct of imita- 
tion a young pointer or setter can learn many a trick 
from an older expert, which it would have found out 
only after a long time, or perhaps not at all, through its 
own sensitive experience. And as we have previously 
observed in discussing the first form of independent 
learning, this instinct of imitation greatly facilitates the 
practice of their innate reflex mechanisms in the off- 
spring of higher animals that live in families or flocks. 
The so-called lessons which birds and carnivorous ani- 
mals give their offspring are psychologically explained 
by the pleasure which the parent animals feel in playing 
w T itb their young. Thus they instinctively show them 
how to do this or that trick. This performance is in- 
stinctively imitated, and the young are said to "learn.'' 
Kittens learn to catch mice by playing in company with 
the cat with a living mouse which the latter brought 
along and uses as the object of their common "game at 
hunting." The fact that under the influence of ex- 
ample the young make many sensile experiences sooner 
than without that influence, makes it plain that the 
fourth form of learning is supplementary to, and sup- 
ports the second. 

The impulse to imitate is so strongly developed in 
apes that it has become proverbial. But the very word 



160 Chapter VIII. 

"to ape" shows that we are not allowed to assume 
individual intelligence even in simians, if we wish to 
give a correct explanation of their imitative impulse. 
That the imitative power of apes is undoubtedly more 
extensive than that of ants is principally due to the 
greater perfection and variety of their sight perceptions. 
But this is no argument in favor of a faculty of thought, 
and consequently of intelligence in apes more than it is 
in ants. On the contrary, this fourth form of learning 
consists in all animals merely in the stimulation of the 
imitative instinct by outer sense perceptions and is re- 
stricted to the activity of sensile cognition and appetite. 
5. The fifth form is that of learning by being 
trained. It is not a self-dependent form of learning, 
and thus it is opposed to the first three forms. It is 
learning by foreign influence, and herein it agrees with 
the fourth form which was learning by imitation. But 
it differs from the latter in as far as the modifying in- 
fluence proceeds from an intelligent being whose influ- 
ence alters the original instinctive activity of the animal. 
The training of animals is accomplished by two essen- 
tially different factors. As we have seen in our discus- 
sion of the second form of learning, we have sensile 
cognition on the part of the animal, through which it 
forms new complex representations and retains them 
in its memory, and on the part of the trainer we have 
intelligence which turns the powers of the animal to 
account by making definite sensitive impressions work 
upon them in regular succession. Thus he awakens in 
the memory of the animal those associations of repre- 
sentations which he intended to call forth by his system 
of training. Consequently the training of animals only 



On the Different Forms of Acquiring Knowledge. 161 

proves the intelligence of man, and not that of the 
animal. 

Even ants can be trained to some extent. 1 suc- 
ceeded in taming a wild ant (F. ruHbarbis) in a short 
time, by accustoming it to lick honey from the tip of my 
finger. 1 In the observation nest which contained the 
Formica sanguinea and their slaves I trained the ants 
to keep the apartments into which I introduced their 
food entirely clean, and to use another separate glass- 
pipe as a place for refuse. 2 The inclination of these 
same ants to persecute the Dinarda, and their skill in 
seizing them, was also due to some extent to training; 
for the very use I made of their nest to study the inter- 
national relations of the Dinar da-races, gave the ants 
ample opportunity to improve their skill in hunting the 
Dinardas by individual sense experiences, which in all 
probability they never would have had in the freedom 
of their natural homes. 

Still the possibility of training ants is far more lim- 
ited than that of training higher animals. But the rea- 
son of this difference is not so much the psychic su- 
periority of the latter, as the extreme difficulty on our 
part of finding suitable points of connection with these 
wee creatures, whereas this connection is given in the 
case of dogs and other vertebrates. There is an im- 
mense difference in the size of man and ants, and the 
difference is almost equally great in regard to the na- 
ture of the organs through which their sense impres- 
sions are mediated. But the difference in size between 



x ) "Vergleichende Studien" (1. Aufl.), p. 38. 

2 ) For these and other examples see' Die psych. Faehigkeiten der 
Ameisen," p. 103 ff. 



162 Chapter VIII. 

man and the higher animals is much less, and the sense 
organs of both are of similar structure. The senses of 
sight and hearing are, above all, most serviceable in the 
training of animals. Even Aristotle 1 observed that 
only those animals can be trained that are gifted with 
hearing, because they alone learn to obey the voice of 
man. 

Let us suppose that man were a being of the same 
size and form as an ant, and were equipped with the 
necessary sense organs, above all with a genuine pair of 
ant-feelers, but still possessed his intelligence, whilst 
the ants were endowed solely with the powers of sensile 
cognition and appetite. It would be much easier for 
this miniature man-ant to enter into communication 
with the genuine species and train them to his purposes. 
For if we consider that real ants, despite their want of 
intelligence, and guided only by individual sensitive 
experiences, recognize in certain species of beetles, as 
Atemeles, Lomechusa, Claviger, etc., genuine guests and 
agreeable associates, although these beetles belong to 
a totally different order of insects, it can hardly be de- 
nied that an intelligent man-ant of their own size, their 
senses and organs of communication, woufd in all prob- 
ability succeed far better in training them than is actu- 
ally the case. This whimsical fiction shows at least this 
much, that the greater facility of training higher ani- 
mals cannot be attributed to an essentially superior na- 
ture of their psychic faculties. 

We have previously examined in different chapters 
of this essay the psychological import of the training of 



x ) Metaphys. lib. 1, c. 1. 



On the Different Forms of Acquiring Knowledge. 163 

higher animals. The result was constantly the same. The 
training of animals only furnishes a proof of the intelli- 
gence of man, and not of the animal. The point of 
contact is found in the powers of cognition and appetite 
on the part of the animal, and the activity of these pow- 
ers is principally induced by hunger and the fear of cor- 
poral chastisement. The first and second forms of 
learning have shown us that the animal is able to ac- 
quire knowledge independently by the instinctive prac- 
tice of its innate reflex mechanisms and by sense experi- 
ences which cause new combinations of representations. 
Nor must we forget to add the instinct of imitation 
which constitutes the fourth form of learning. This 
threefold basis is taken into account by the trainer. He 
forces the animal to practice certain reflex motions. 
Thus he teaches a horse to acquire the different equine 
movements. He forces the animal to imitate certain 
arbitrary motions which he shows it how to do, and to 
assume certain attitudes of the body which are other- 
wise unnatural to it. Thus a dog learns to stand on its 
hind legs and to fetch and carry different objects. 
Finally, he mechanically impresses upon the animal's 
sensile memory certain new combinations of representa- 
tions by regularly repeating the same sensile impres- 
sions. Thus Lubbock's poodle Van finally learnt to 
"read," by being trained to fetch the card with the word 
"food," when it was hungry. There is not the faintest 
notion of animal intelligence in this whole process. The 
sole agents are the powers of sensile cognition and 
appetite and the sensile memory of the animal, and the 
intelligence of man. 

6. The sixth form is that of learning by intelligent 



164 Chapter VIII. 

instruction. He who learns must not only retain those 
combinated representations, to which the teacher has 
given rise by regularly repeating a certain train of 
sense impressions, as is done in the fifth form, but he 
must continue to reason by his own activity. This form 
supposes and rests upon the fifth, but at the same time 
it goes much further. Moreover, it comprises the 
fourth form of learning by instinctive imitation, nor is 
it independent of the first three forms, and certainly 
includes the second and third, which deal with learning 
by self-development. Its necessary supposition is, that 
he who learns be able to form new associations of rep- 
resentations from experience, as is done in the second 
form, and to infer new conditions of things from those 
which formerly existed, as is characteristic of the third, 
It is precisely through its relation to this third form of 
learning that the sixth essentially differs from the fifth, 
which consists in learning by training. For as it is 
impossible to learn to think independently and to infer, 
without the power of reasoning, and, consequently, 
without intelligence in the full sense of the word, so is 
it equally impossible to learn by instruction, if he 
who learns be not endowed with intellect. If he lack 
the power of reasoning, he will never do more than 
combine the different representations which arose from 
his own sense experience, or through the influence of 
his teacher; he is unable to rise higher in the psychic 
scale; he cannot learn by instruction to carry on inde- 
pendent conclusions: he cannot learn to think, because 
he has no power of thought. 

When a child learns to read and write, it gradually 
ascends from the lowest to the highest stages of learn- 



On the Different Forms of Acquiring Knowledge. 165 

ing. It not only learns to imitate certain sounds and 
written symbols mechanically and to combine them ac- 
cording to constant and definite rules, but it learns to 
understand the meaning of these phonetic and graphic 
symbols. Hence, after a certain time, it is able to ex- 
press its own thoughts by pen or word of mouth in its 
own way. Even the child of the most uncultured sav- 
age possesses the power of learning new truths by 
instruction. It learns how to understand them more 
and more. This fact is fully established by the history 
of civilization, and especially by the missionary an- 
i:als of modern times. Therefore the only point 
at issue is, whether or not animals are likewise 
endowed with a similar power. Properly speaking, the 
question has already been answered, when we discussed 
the third form of self-dependent learning; animals are 
unable to infer new conditions of things from those 
which formerly existed; therefore, they are likewise 
unable to learn by instruction. For its necessary suppo- 
sition, individual intelligence, is wanting in the psychic 
endowment of the animal. 

Still, let us adduce some examples which are to the 
point. In spite of its long course of training Lubbock's 
poodle Van often brought the wrong card, when it was 
hungry, instead of the card with the word "food" w T rit- 
ten on it. This fact shows that it never understood the 
relation between the graphic symbols and their meaning. 
Nor did it occur to Van to give "reading lessons" to 
Patience, the lap-dog. Nor did Patience hit upon the 
idea of profiting by Van's experience, although she had 
often witnessed the reward which Van received for 
fetching the proper card. The reason is, because 



166 Chapter VIII. 

neither the one nor the other was endowed with the 
faculty of thought. 

Stories are often told about instructions in walking, 
flying, eating, hunting, etc., which higher animals are 
said to impart to their offspring. 1 However, on strip- 
ping these facts of all arbitrary additions, the pretended 
'lesson" turns out to be an instinctive stimulation of 
the impulse to imitate, which has been aroused by the 
parent animals, and helps the young to practice their 
natural reflex mechanisms. The latter in turn furnish 
the occasion for many individual sense experiences 
which the young animals would not have had, if left to 
themselves. Such phenomena belong to the fourth 
form of learning, and include the first and the second. 
They do not furnish the slightest evidence in favor of 
an intelligent instruction on the part of the parent ani- 
mals. Indeed, it is the purest anthropomorphism, even 
to apply the terms "instruction" or "lesson" to such 
phenomena. 

There are still other striking anecdotes about par- 
rots, starlings, and various birds which "learned to 
speak" by human instruction. But a closer examina- 
tion of the recorded facts shows that they have nothing 
to do with an intelligent learning on the part of the 
animal. In training an animal we rely on its instinct of 
imitation, in order that it may learn to utter a certain 
succession of sounds. But there is not a single proof 
that any bird ever really understood the intelligent con- 
nection of those sounds. On the contrary, the wrong 
and awkward way, in which the animal generally ap- 
plies its treasures of wisdom, is the cause of our amuse- 

l ) See Altum, "Der Vogel und sein Leben" (6th edition), p. 208. 



On the Different Forms of Acquiring Knowledge. 167 

merit, and we must naturally find these misapplications 
very ludicrous. The facts we allude to must be ex- 
plained by the sensile power of cognition of the animal, 
and by the formation of new combinations of repre- 
sentations in its sensile memory; whilst the seemingly 
intelligent order of these associations results from the 
intelligence of man who trains the bird to speak. But 
the pretended jokes which parrots are said to have in- 
vented, are the merest fairy tales. An enthusiast or a 
sentimental lover of animals may perhaps take pleasure 
in them, but they are of no value to an earnest natu- 
ralist. 

But it is time to sum up the results of this dis- 
cussion. 

In view of true biological facts, the following forms 
of learning have to be distinguished : 

I. Self-Dependent Learning. 

i. Through instinctive practice of innate reflex 
mechanisms, which is released by the muscular sensa- 
tions of the subject. 

2. By sense experiences, in virtue of which new 
combinations of representations and impulses are 
formed without the aid of intervening reflection 
(sensile memory). 

3. By sense experiences and the intelligent infer- 
ence of new conditions from those which formerly ex- 
isted {sensile memory and genuine intelligence). 

II. Learning by Foreign Influence. 

4. By the stimulation of the instinct of imitation 
which is brought about by the examples of others. 



/ 



168 Chapter VIII. 

5. By training, when man impresses on other 
beings that are endowed with senses new associations 
of representations and impulses, according to his indi- 
vidual plans. 

6. By intelligent teaching {instruction), when one 
intelligent being teaches another not only how to form 
new associations of representations independently, but 
also hozv to infer new conclusions from previous knowl- 
edge. 

The conclusions that follow from this exposition, 
are: 

1. All six forms of learning are found united only 
in man. Animals, possess the first, or the first and the 
fourth, or the first, second, fourth and fifth, according 
to the degree of their psychic endowment. 

2. In ants as well as in higher animals the first, 
second, fourth and fifth forms of learning can be ac- 
tually identified. 

3. Only the third and sixth forms prove the ex- 
istence of intelligence in the full sense of the word on 
the part of him who learns; whilst the remainder do 
not furnish such proofs. 

4. Hence, the statement of modern animal psy- 
chology that "Learning by individual experience is a 
criterion of intelligence" must be abandoned, as fully 
unwarrantable. 

5. As the third and sixth forms are not found in 
animals, we must state that <s animal intelligence" does 
not exist, 



CONCLUSION. 

THE critical examination of the notion of intelligence, 
as employed by modern animal psychology, has 
shown us that the latter designates as " intelligence in 
animals," what is no intelligence at all. It evidently 
belongs to the sphere of instinctive sentiency. No trace 
of intelligence, that is to say of a spiritual power of ab- 
straction, is to be found either in higher or in lower 
animals. Spiritual life begins only in man. It is in- 
deed closely connected with, although essentially dif- 
ferent from sensitive life, which man shares with the 
higher vertebrates. Intelligence reaches far beyond 
sensitive life. This is evident, above all, from the gift 
of speech which is the expression of the logical activity 
of man. It is speech that externally distinguishes the 
psychic endowment of man from that of the animal; 
but it is intelligence that makes man what he is, — a hu- 
man being. His sensitive-spiritual soul makes man the 
crown of the visible creation. His reason and liberty 
give him a position immeasurably higher than that of 
the irrational animal, which follows its sensile impulses 
without reflection, and cannot do otherwise. Through 
his spiritual soul man is the image and likeness of the 
Supreme, Uncreated Spirit, of God, his Creator. 

But here we stand before that well-known stum- 
bling block which modern science cannot remove in 
spite of all its endeavors : before the assumption of a 
personal God, the Creator of the world. This is not 
the place to develop, in detail, the theistic views of na- 
ture and to justify them against the pleas of material- 

169 



170 Conclusion. 

istic and monistic theories. But we would modestly 
advise all modern naturalists to subject these theistic 
views and doctrines to a thorough study, 1 before de- 
claring them untenable. Such is the modern "fash- 
ion." Otherwise w T e might justly reply that their opin- 
ions are the result of ignorance and prejudice. It is 
a pity to behold, how even naturalists who reason 
logically, deem themselves free from this earnest duty 
in endeavoring to solve the highest metaphysical prob- 
lems. Instead of disproving these theistic views in 
their real and true shape, they frame for themselves 
seme fantastic caricature. Then, of course, they easily 
arrive at the conclusion, that the claims of theism have 
been brushed away and must necessarily yield to 
monism. Even Mr. Aug. Forel fell into this very 
error in his lecture on "Brain and Soul." Although 
we must acknowledge that he strove with full con- 
viction to retain the notion of God in science, we earn- 
estly regret that he entertained very imperfect ideas 
concerning the theistic notion of God. Prof. Emery 
likewise deemed it necessary, towards the close of his 
treatise on instinct and intelligence in animals, to op- 
pose our previously established conclusion, that the 
study of "animal instinct" naturally led to the assump- 
tion of a personal Creator. He would rather return 
to the "ignoramus," than "assume the interference of 
a mystical Creator." If Emery's assertion were true 
that the incompleteness of a mechanico-biological ex- 
planation of nature forces us to choose the "ignoramus" 
or to "deify the unknown causes of natural phenomena 



x ) For this purpose we recommend Tilmann Pesch's "Die grossen 
Weltraetsel," 2d Vol. 



Conclusion. 171 

as supernatural forces, or to personify them and make 
of them a Creator endowed with thought like man" — 
then we, too, would certainly prefer the "ignoramus" 
to such preposterous metaphysical views. However, 
the rational assumption of a spiritual being of infinite 
wisdom and power which is the reason of its own nec- 
essary existence, and must, therefore, be the reason and 
the first cause of all finite existence, — this assumption 
is entirely different from the anthropomorphic carica- 
tures of a "personal creator" framed by monistic scien- 
tists. If modern naturalists did not draw their knowl- 
edge of theistic views from the writings of such men 
as Ernest Haeckel, who cannot fancy the God of 
Christianity other than "a gaseous vertebrate," but 
from the solid works of Christian philosophers, many 
prejudices would soon disappear. 



JUN 101903 



